• 13Dec 09

  Tribute to a NON Halo game... if you can imagine.

  I seriously cannot STAND that they are making yet another ******* Halo game.

  Sorry for being a bit of a lurker the last several weeks – I've been intending to post something, but I've been so intensely busy at work, I really have just not had the required amounts of time and energy at the same time. I can't promise that this is a triumphant return, I have yet to see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, however I've had this blog here on my computer for about a few months now, and I figured now was as good a time as any to get it out there.

  It was initially going to be my 100th blog on here and I wanted to do kind of a rundown of one of my favorite franchises. There's actually quite a bit of info to go with these games, so while this blog will be lengthy, it's still going to be a flyby.

  My first interaction with a Role Playing game came about 1990. I got my hands on a board game called 'Hero's Quest' which was essentially a watered down D&D. The quests and maps were all laid out in the accompanying manual, which made no sense at all to my 9 year old self, and while I did play it with a couple of friends, following the rules as best we could – it usually ended up just being a really nerdy version of ninja turtles beating up tiny plastic figurines….. with multisided dice as grenades…. I was NINE, back off.

  The game is actually downstairs in my office/guest bedroom closet as I type this. Mostly still together I believe. It has moved with me over the years, but never re opened, and remains in obscurity, reminiscent of my brief foray into RPGs before I was ready.… I'm sure Donatello's +10 bo staff of Radical Awesome is still in there.

  The real love affair started with King's Quest V several years later. It was part of a Sierra Classic's 10-Pack that came with my family's first computer that wasn't some kind of hand me down and could actually function. It sported Windows 3.1 and was just the fanciest magic box on our street. This 10-pack that also had another gem in it called Space Quest IV, which was also a lot of fun. Now – I understand that these are not actually RPGs – they are point and click adventure games to the core… but I'm getting to that. Adventure games to me, looking back, were my spring board. These games had virtually no role playing elements beyond "assuming a role and playing it" - they were digital storybooks interspersed with puzzles. There were no 'unscripted' conflicts, so everything had a set outcome, and usually only one way to get there. This entailed clicking everything in your inventory on every person and item on the screen. The more things you found, story elements and countless easter eggs, the more points that went to your completion score. After completing these games several times over in a silent protest against the FPS genre that had begun to plague me, I thirsted for more. Not really knowing what RPGs were at the time, and having no reliable way to access the then infant internet. I could only go by the company name, and box art. My mother had dragged me to, I believe, an Office Depot. They had some utility software with a very small selection of games. Amoung them, I saw a game then known as 'Hero's Quest' made by none other than Sierra. (Since renamed to Quest for Glory I due to the original board game getting a digital incarnation with the same name and held the rights and trademark)

  Using a combination of puppy dog eyes and some verbal maneuvers that would make a politician audibly gasp, I got my mom to spring for the game. I should mention that at the time, I was grounded. Which doesn't sound like it would be a huge obstacle… but bear in mind that grounding me was my parents primary form of punishment at the time, and thus my groundings tended to last for periods much longer than anyone else had ever heard of. I'll spare you the details.

  ANYWAYS, all I could do is look at the artwork on the box and read the manual. I read it front to back on almost a daily basis, pining for the day I would finally get this thing installed, and play.

  That day finally came about a month later when my parents collectively took pity on my apparent lack of interest in anything, having not played a game or watched tv in months, not to mention not played with friends. They allowed me "computer privileges" which kept me in the house, and they still had control of their TV. (No doubt my father's stipulation) You guys probably remember installing games back in the day. DOS made me it's ***ch on a regular basis by way of overcomplicated installation and setup programs. Set the IRQ to 5 or 7, install and activate the mouse driver separately, test the Soundblaster, do you hear sound? No? Change another variable… and round and round we go.

  After probably an hour of battle, I was finally ready to type hq.exe into the command line.

  The familiar Sierra logo and its signature accompanying music came on the screen, and I knew I was in for a new adventure. Upon clicking the new game option, I was given a choice that would define my role playing characters from then on. Fighter, Mage, or Thief?

  These archetypes have been around for decades, but this was my first real interaction with them. (Aside from reading about it in the manual) Before this, D&D was already lost to me as it seemed too complicated to be interesting to me, and my Hero Quest experience solidified the fact that I would never have interest in the Table Top RPGs… not to mention it requires a certain level of nerd that I hope I never attain, as I like having a social life and touching boobies on occasion… *ahem*

  The fighter didn't really interest me…. And I didn't want to be a thief, because I associated it with being bad, which I didn't want to be(I had yet to gain my deviant abilities) – so Mage it was. This was all new to me, so I was completely enthralled – gaining levels, assigning points, getting stronger, smarter, faster. I was the bionic woman. Or man. That was also worth a million dollars circa 1970's money. Shutup.

  I loved it, and promptly sought out Hero's Quest II… joke was on me though. Turns out my copy of the game was actually a REMAKE of a game released in 1989 with basic EGA (16 colors) graphics that was not in circulation anymore, along with its sequel, lost for all time. Now these were also not full on RPGs… they were hybrids of the adventure games, with a lot of RPG influences… again, my relative inexperience kept me ignorant of this. So I didn't care about the semantics.

  I'll go ahead and point out now that a major shortcoming throughout the entire series is the combat system – it's very simple, but clunky, and barely worth mentioning beyond that. Click on the sword to use your sword (or physical attack) the spell icons to cast the associated spell, and the bag to use an item. The end.

  I showed the game to a friend, proud of my accomplishment in finding this title. He looked at it briefly, and said it reminded him of another Sierra game he had laying around, but due to its being a NON-fps. he had lost interest in it pretty quickly. "Here you can have it." He went into his closet and came out carrying a box; I could hear the disks moving freely about inside, despite being a fairly recent release, it was the signature of an outdated game in a time when all the latest and greatest were coming out on CDs. (i.e. Doom 2) He threw the box in my direction which I caught in that awkward way a kid catches things that are unexpectedly flung at their faces…. By that I mean it hit me in the face and it fell into my lap. The game was Quest for Glory III. I flipped through the manual briefly; the opening page touted it as the long awaited sequel to Quest for Glory II, now in full VGA splendor! The thing that caught my attention and eventually led to the realization of the above few paragraphs was in parenthesis next to Quest for Glory II (Sequel to the formerly named Hero's Quest) Coming to the realization that I had in my hands *A* sequel, if not the direct one was almost too much too handle. I suppressed my excitement, as I didn't want my friend to change his mind. I then promptly started feeling "sick" and peddled my bike back to my house as fast as I could, QFGIII tucked safely under my arm. This game quickly became my favorite, firstly because it picked up my saved character from my Hero's Quest game, and gave me the option to have my character become a Paladin. Which gave me more experience points at the start, and more spells to cast. I couldn't follow the references to the previous game, having never played it – and didn't quite get why I was suddenly the 'Prince of Shapier' however, the NPCs also referred to me as 'The Hero of Spielberg' which was the name of the land in the first game, to which there are numerous references as well. I appreciated the fan service, and the idea that I was still with the same character amused me. That coupled with fun puzzles, side quests, and interesting characters endeared the game to me, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

  It was about that time I found the first Final Fantasy game for the NES, which was technically my first real RPG, it solidified my love of the genre, but aside from Phantasy Star on the Genesis, my interaction from that point was fairly limited and I was reluctantly returned to my sidescroller action games by the lack of other options. (It's hard for a kid to feed this expensive habit)

  Sometime later, as a sophomore in high school, during a lull in my gaming life, as my friends were wrapped up in Goldeneye, I was wandering aimlessly around a best buy, having just gotten my drivers license, wandering aimlessly was sort of a hobby. I strolled down the PC gaming aisle, and out of the corner of my eye, and I saw it. Quest for Glory V : Dragon Fire.

  There was a Quest for Glory IV!? Why did no one tell me this!? BLASPHEMY! I grabbed the box from the shelf and promptly went searching for part IV. Which I did not find.

  I played through the first part of V, and it was a real treat – point and click adventure games had by then lost their place in the spotlight, replaced my more advanced gameplay mechanics and graphics intensive games. So I was pretty much alone in my enjoyment, and I didn't mind one bit. I did research QFGIV a bit and found that it had more or less bombed and had become notorious for an excessive amount of game breaking bugs and glitches. However, it still existed and could be found in an anthology that had the first 4 games in a reportedly patched form. Which I set out to find and purchase soon after, abandoning my Quest for Glory V game thinking I will return with a character that has played through all 4 games. A lofty goal, and a foolish one at that. I played through Quest for Glory I : So you Want to Be a Hero in a day. It was effortless as I knew the game backwards and forwards. I installed Quest for Glory II : Trial by Fire, and was met with the original EGA version. I tried to make it past this, but the graphics were so awful, I literally could not tell where I could and couldn't walk, let alone figure out where I was going or what I was supposed to be doing, on top of this, it turns out the original two games used typed commands, and thus no mouse interface. (There is finally a remake floating around out there by AGD Interactive released late last year free of charge, which I admit is making me consider trying this series again from start to finish) So beaten, but not broken, I moved to Quest for Glory III: Wages of War. This game took me about a week, this one didn't stick with me as much as the first one had apparently, but it was still every bit as enjoyable as I remembered. Then on to Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness. This game was significantly more difficult that the previous entries, and it sported a much darker theme and more adult oriented humor.. not x rated by any means, but definitely more mature. I remember the lines between good and evil being a bit more grey – where before you always KNEW who the bad guy was. I did not complete this game however as I came face to face with one of those glitches that were supposed to be fixed and I lost the game save. After several days of giving the box angry looks, I put it out of my sight and focused on Quest for Glory V: Dragon Fire. This game sported a great story, and was kind of a return to form, while still retaining it's more mature themes – a fan service for those of us who aged along with the IP I suppose. These games can't hold up to our standards 10 to 20+ years later, but they were fairly outdated already by the time I found them except for part V, which it was on the dying end of the genre anyways. So that never entered into it for me, I guess I get to view them with more nostalgia than most fans probably would. Each game had a different story, and setting, the first one was more of a Germanic story town; part two (apparently) has a Middle Eastern or Arabian Nights kind of thing going on, part three is more of an African plains motif, part four has heavy Russian influences and the final entry is based on the Roman Empire. Throughout all these parts, there are recurring characters from the previous games, and new characters each time, and they manage to keep most if not all of them interesting. It's odd that a series in which I've only played every other one can keep itself with me for so long. I don't know if I'll ever play them again, I'm not even sure I can, as old games aren't exactly a favorite task of newer, more powerful systems. My laptop is probably 100x more computer than the desktop I had when I first typed HQ into the command prompt. The mere thought of trying to get a game more than 10 years old running gives me a headache by itself… I know there's DOSBOX out there – but I have Vista and I'm afraid of what it will do to me and my loved ones if I ever tried to enjoy doing something that it doesn't allow on its own.

  None the less, the memories have earned this crazy, but charming series of games with the quirky humor a permanent place on my gaming shelf.

  • Posted Dec 13, 2009 10:02 am PT
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• 14Nov 09

  Achievement Unlocked

  you ranted 19 times without using the word 'squeegee.'

  You know something? I hate achievements. I hate trophies. I hate them because they reward me for doing or finding little buried things inside a game, they push me to do things that I might not have thought of on my own, or even better, getting them while I'm just messing around in a game and unlock something on accident, then I scream a high pitched "EEEE!" in delight, and I can't wait to get the next one.

  

  "EEEEEEEE!"

  I hate them because I love them, some of you may understand what I mean, and might even know where I am going with this – and hats off to you, because I'm not entirely sure myself yet, but let's just see where this train takes us.

  

  I see nothing wrong with this picture being taken out of contex.... oh.

  On the minor points, as I said before, it's great that you can see this list of goals and things to do outside of the normal play, but I have a problem with them being listed out for me, games have a tendency to give out achievements/trophies for completing the game over the course of the story, which is fine. Some of them have clever titles that are silly, but still somehow sum it up in a few words. Whoever decided it would be a good idea to have these listed out BEFORE you've achieved them, and why everyone around them agreed is beyond me. You get a cliff notes version of the game and you risk spoiling plot points for yourself if you decide to check it out to see what you get if you collect the 8 billion shiny pebbles scattered throughout the game. I hate that, and it IS getting better, but still, this seems like a no-brainer, or maybe a little bit of brainer.

  

  Pictured: Very little brain.

  This one is more game specific and requires a bit of background first: I've let a good friend of mine move into my spare bedroom while he saves up some money and gets himself back on his feet… being a primarily (read: ONLY) single player gamer, I don't have much in the way of two or more player games, on top of that, he himself is the absolute definition of casual gamer as far as I'm concerned. He doesn't himself own any consoles, and to my recollection he has only had a PS2 in his possession once for about a month like 6 years ago. IF he games, it will be a current gen Madden game. Personally, I hate sports games, as I've no interest in them. The only sport I can even follow is Baseball, and even then I'm not thrilled with it. I just don't care and I doubt that I ever will. In any case, in an effort to cheer him up a bit as well as give us something to do, I went and bought Madden 2010 and an extra controller for my PS3. This was the second game I had ever purchased for my PS3, the first being Infamous, which I managed to get ALL the trophies for (something I'm quite proud of for inexplicable reasons beyond me being easily pleased and sating my need to see that 100%) I had decided at that point that I would not buy any more games for my ps3 until the current games were beaten, the idea being to not have a shameful backlog like on my 360. And PS2. And Gamecube. And Xbox. And PC.

  I didn't think about this when I put the game in, I SHOULD have created a new gamer account, I SHOULD have just not bought the stupid thing in the first place. I SHOULD have stopped after that tequila s—wait what was I talking about? Oh yeah – so my friend is a very skilled Madden player, his knowledge of the sport AND the game is frighteningly encyclopedic, I tried but it was just too much for me. (To me, all those lines and squiggles mean zilch, usually when I state this, I'm accused of being gay… remember, I live in Texas, and there is a whole different breed of stupid down here. Fortunately they tend to stay out of the cities for the most part. However, I find it immensely amusing to point out to these angry redneck homophobes out there that they are themselves getting a little too excited about a sport where large men in tights jump on top of each other as much and as often as they can manage. This also gets me into a lot of trouble&hellip

  

  No comment.... orgy.

  Anyways, he gets plenty of use out of the game. However, not.one.bloody.trophy has been earned. We've had this game for over 3 months and the big fat goose egg is an eyesore to me. It's not like he hasn't tried either - I looked at the list, not only is a large portion of them online only, a lot of them are RIDICULOUSLY specific. Things like a certain player intercepting a pass to another certain player. WHILE it's SNOWING. There's several like that – and that annoys me, and the rest are earned online. I will never play the game myself, I know I won't – and he'll be moving out soon. Bah.

  Now, let's get to the nitty gritty. The whole reason for this nonsense and what I believe to be my initial gripe, although there's no telling with me. This is kind of a dual blog, single player games and their online modes and the trophies and achievements that can only be gained through online… *groan*… 'multiplayer'.

  I've said this many times, I hate, hate multiplayer. Specifically the online variety… I don't mind a co-op every now and then, and I've done my share of death matches. However, once again, something in Kelly's blog pushes me into a seething rage – not at her, mind you… just call it angry enlightenment, like "Yeah. …. YEAH. DAMNIT. EXACTLY! #*&$*$!!!1!"

  If Kelly got me started, it was our own soapboxed JohnSteed (congrats by the way, it's a good read and glad it got out there) that knocked me over the cliff with his take on Dragon Age, and his theory on the split of MMOs and RPGs vs. say the FPS games which more and more rely on a multiplayer element as a primary game play function and tack a SP mode on incase Xbox live is down that day.

  

  No indeed.

  Lengthy, meaningful and VALUABLE single player experiences are hard to come by. Value is key, in Johns blog, he talks about paying full price for Dragon Age, and getting more value out of it than games he waits for the price drop. I'm paraphrasing, but that speaks volumes to me. This is not a cheap hobby we all share, I don't want to think about the thousands I've spent on it over the years. It's a money pit, and we all know it. If you didn't, well – now you do…also, PM me your bank account information. So getting value for my dollar means a lot. Multiplayer means nothing to me, I detest it and it's disheartening to me to see the online modes starting to take up so much of the spotlight. I'm looking at Dragon Age myself. It is SINGLE PLAYER ONLY. How often do we get to say that anymore? Sure there are always some in the pipeline, the next few months are actually starting to look really good to me, which contradicts everything I've just said, but this is an oddity rather than the norm and the majority are sequels – so let's talk numbers. The ratio given to me by the highly paid research team that I just pictured in my head is 34 to 1. (citation needed)

  

  "Okay, but let's go ahead and make the velociraptor way more dangerous. We're kind of stupid that way anyhow."

  Okay so I don't have "real numbers" per se to back that up, but its "common knowledge." You can't argue with me on the grounds that putting things in quotes makes them "vague enough to mean several things."

  

  Not Pictured: Sharks with frikken laser beams attached to their frikken heads.

  More often than not, I buy a game because it looks to be entertaining, (except Madden) I'm not one to pick up a crappy game on the cheap in a bargain bin for easy points a la 'Barbie's Super High Fashion Adventure on a Pony II'. (Part I was better anyway) For example I picked up Brutal Legend, played through it, beat it, and like many games, it has this BS multiplayer element tacked on. I'm fine with ignoring that, nothing says I HAVE to play it, and god knows I don't want to - unless of course I want those %&*$# Trophies! This, friends, irritates me to no end. Place 1st in a ranked game, Compete in 100 matches, Beat Opponent in some specific and frustratingly difficult manner 10 times. I get that this is a pointless gripe – I'm not holding my breath for a change, but am I alone here? Why must I allow a 10 year old (boy?) to scream into my ear how awesome his mommy tells him he is so I can have 100% completion on one of my games? I would submit the solution is to keep multiplayer trophies separate. Playing within the SP mode will allow for 100% completion and the multiplayer can have its own set beyond that. That makes sense right? Play the game to completion and its reflected on your card, and multiplayer is separate, as it's not part of the main game anyhow, so it stands on its own. If you don't play it, then you just never see it. Makes sense to me anyways. Right, that will happen.

  Achievement Unlocked : Went online for an ultimately meaningless trophy, now your girlfriend hates you.

  

  Cursed chastity belts.

  • Posted Nov 14, 2009 7:56 am PT
  • Category: Games
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• 25Oct 09

  So, Digital Downloads eh?

  oh yeah. I went there.

  
  

  The hot topic in the industry lately seems to be 'Digital Downloads' – This is partly spawned from Kelly's post on the topic, but it's something I've wanted to sound off on myself for awhile.

  The short answer is simply this: I can't get behind DD.

  The not short answer is :

  Call me old fashioned, but I prefer having a physical copy of my media, be it game, movie, music or otherwise. EBooks? HA. My inner gamer is not threatened by this idea, I don't see the industry switching entirely to DD anytime soon - they would cut their own business down by a huge amount - I'm clearly not the only one who prefers a physical product, but also most people with anything less than a high speed connection are not going to try to download a massive game over a period of what could be days or even weeks depending.

  Not only that, but what about the ever looming presence of next gen? When we all invariably upgrade to the PS9, Xbox9000 or whatever phallic joke Nintendo comes up with, are we supposed to just forget about all the money we've sunk into our old DDs? Surely they won't maintain those servers for all time, and we will eventually run out of room on whatever console we have, and fairly quickly too if current hd space is any indication. "But V, you amazingly handsome manbeast!" I hear you exclaim, "Surely you don't care about games that you've already played through and beaten (or not beaten) enough to play them again when you have a shiny new Nintenboxstation with TURBO GRAFIX!!"

  Here's the thing, I am a gamer, and like most gamers, my nature is to horde the **** out of my favorite games. The majority of us I'd wager are collectors to one extent or another. The developers know this – How many of you went and found all those damn stars in Mario 64? Or every blast shard in Infamous? I did. I can't help myself. I love that feeling of 100% completion, and I love having a good library to run my fingers across when I'm trying to decide what to play, sooo sexy… but I digress. The point is that I still fire up my NES or my Genesis from time to time - I love those old games, Somewhere in my collection of junk there is a box with an Atari 2600 in it with a modest collection of games. It's where I started, and I enjoy going back there every now and then just to remind myself what it's all about. Particularly when I find myself losing interest in games, it's good for me to go retro for awhile and get a little taste of the old school. There's a huge nostalgic factor with gamers and their games. I still have an old 36" tube in my guest room that's main function is retro gaming. Whether you are reliving the first time you picked up a NES controller and squished a goomba, or arguing with an unsettling amount of passion about spelling her name Aeris or Aerith, we all have games that we think back to and say "yeah that's the good stuff". That said, there is a very high chance that I will feel the same about some of the games I've played through in the last few months. Maybe I'll break out my PS3 to play some Arkham Asylum, just to show some young upstart what games were like before you just downloaded them into your brain. Okay, that's pushing it – but DDs would take all this away from me eventually – As I said in the beginning I'm old fashioned, and I have the preferences to match. I'm sure that 20 years from now none of that will matter to the modern day gamer, but as for me, I'll be the creepy old man with a huge stash of the old school and I'll love every bit of it.

  In the meantime, if they want to offer the OPTION of a DD alongside the pressed disc, then that is perfectly reasonable, it's a great way to distribute independent games, and budget titles… little gems that otherwise wouldn't see the light of day… it just opens up the market that much more, and those that want to deal with it, great. Those that prefer the box have their cake too, or a combination. Everyone wins.

  • Posted Oct 25, 2009 10:01 am PT
  • Category: Fashion
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