arne360

A weekly log of the games I’ve played accompanied by some random thoughts about them

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Lord of the Rings Online
Over the course of the day I managed to put in a few hours in LOTRO. I hit level 21 with my Lore-master doing quests, which included my first Fellowship party with one other person as we decimated Elite spiders in Minas Eriol for a quest. I think I saw my first Fellowship maneuver opportunity, but I wasn’t sure because I’ve never seen one. If it was, I totally wasted whatever it was I could do for epic win. I also have managed to accumulate over 1 gold in this time. After that I started doing low-level quests in Buckland and The Shire to hit 22 because everything else I have flagged is either to high of a level or requires a Fellowship to complete. It is nice that I can walk past a ton of level 10 mobs, right up to the item I have to retrieve as part of my quest, get it and walk right back out without a fight. With only about 9k XP left, I’ll probably hit 22 this week so I can spend some of my silver getting new Lore-master skills. Am I a nerd yet?

*****

Monday, August 18, 2008

Bionic Commando: Rearmed
Finally got a chance to try this out this week. I realized I had my NES copy of the game, but since my NES isn’t hooked up at the moment, I didn’t get any practice in before BC:R was released last week. I remember I used to be so smooth with swinging around with the bionic arm and getting through levels. I am definitely rusty. Most definitely. I defeated the first boss on my third try, that’s how sad it was. 16 minutes just to clear the level.

Lord of the Rings Online
More LOTRO. What I have become. Continued the easier quests to hit level 22 until I got greedy with a quest that required a Fellowship around level 18. Deep in the Old Forest, after a bunch of spiders, there was a big nasty Elite Haunted Barren-oak tree, with some bad tree root friends. I managed to get it down to about 24% before I died. The thing is, I was stupid. I only had one add that I could have kept indefinitely stunned or I could have kited the tree away a bit and maybe, just maybe I could have outlasted the Elite tree. Not going back to this until I am a higher level. Or with a Fellowship. Quit the session with 1.2k before level 21. All these low level quests are less than 200 XP each, so it’s slow going.

*****

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Lord of the Rings Online
Yes, more, more, more. Soon I’ll be treated for OCD. Or be found in an Internet cafe in Korea. Hit level 22 finishing one quest and defeating random things in the Old Forest. Picked up my one new Lore-master skill (Cracked Earth) which I’ve read is useful later on and completed the requirements to get the Apprentice level for Weaponsmith. I have a bunch of recipes for Scholar and Weaponsmith that require Journeyman level. So maybe soon, after some farming. I sold some stacks of crafting components at the auction house. I also gained two new class traits–Healer and Beast-lore. Too bad I only have one more free until level 27. Anyhow, I hit my goal so I can take a break on LOTRO for now. Just occurred to me tonight that I should have been taking screenshots to go with my updates.

*****

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Galaga Legions
Wow, this totally kicked my ass. This isn’t quite as tight or brilliant a remix as Pac-Man: Championship Edition was, but this is right up there regardless. The vintage, retro skin is where it’s at. Don’t even bother with the new or “standard” skin. Obviously I’m still struggling getting some of the game mechanics and patterns down so I can get better, but I do like the idea of side-pod guns that can you place in one of four cardinal directions whenever you want, even if they aren’t near you. This makes it feel like there is a rhythm towards clearing some of the stages because of how, where and when waves come at you. I know I’ll never get to the point where I can really maximize bonuses. Definitely going to keep playing this. I want to play more Pac-Man:Championship Edition now too.

*****

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty
Shamefully I’ve never played a Ratchet & Clank game, nor have I played the most recent iteration, Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction. Therefore I felt a little dirty playing this episodic “sequel” of sorts–I’ll definitely have to myself the favor of grabbing the full title next week since what little I played so far was pretty fun.

Braid
I went back to Braid after a lengthy hiatus because I felt stuck and couldn’t figure out some of the puzzles. I’m still missing one puzzle piece in World 2 that I’m almost tempted to look up a solution for, but I won’t… yet. I solved the World 4-3 and then immediately got stuck and frustrated with trying to wrap my head around World 4-4 (”The Hunt”) so I gave up. Instead, I took a quick peek at World 5 and I was totally not ready for the shadow mechanics I encountered. Still managed to get a few puzzle pieces off of this one before I called it a night.

The highlight of the session was being completely stuck on World 4-3 thinking I had ruined my playthrough because I rewound too far when it turned out I had solved the puzzle by accident. One could say “eureka!” if one was old, which I am not, so I didn’t.

*****

Q.E.D.

Although I now hold a minor grudge for spoiling a specific quest I might not ever get to in Oblivion, I recommend reading Nayan’s editorial on HDRLying about story in games and the use of the unreliable narrator. It was thought provoking enough that I even passed this around to a couple people at work today. For me, the missing example here that everyone could easily relate to would be using the somewhat obvious and darling-of-everybody game for interesting story and with a unreliable narrator: Portal. Although, this might be the most accessible of examples, there are some flaws with using Portal as a concise example. The reveal and impact–and subsequent questioning of one self and one’s surroundings–aren’t as compelling as the Oblivion example. In Portal, the unreliable narrator, GLaDOS, is revealed as such far too soon. At least too soon to grow some level of trust before you realize the diabolic nature of your unseen guide and narrator.

I mentioned this to Nayan, who unfortunately hasn’t had a chance to play Portal yet. Talking a bit more, lead to the following bit of exchange:

• me: max payne is another good one.
• Nayan: Is max an unreliable narrator? there’s a lot of doubt that you see in his dreams
• Nayan: like, in Max Payne 1, you kill yourself after you kill your own family…but i always thought that was a metaphor for essentially killing your family for being married to your job
• me: if only you take it far enough to question whether his dream sequences have affected his judgement in reality.

That was just the start of it. It was nice to read something last night that got me thinking a bit more about some of the games I’ve played with, ones that I especially hadn’t considered from a more critical point of view. Even better was that Nayan’s post generated discussion between me and a few other folks about storytelling in games.

Last night IGN put up a story about how Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune would get a patch to add Trophy support “very, very soon.” Which it is. In the piece there is a short video that shows Trophies in action in Uncharted (below). Along with that there’s a brief interview with a Naughty Dog rep, Arne Meyer, about the Trophy paaa…

Oh wait. Yeah, that’s me.

Guess now it’s “official.” Even though it’s just words on a screen, this feels as awkward as watching yourself on video or listening to a recording of yourself — I still have nightmares about my totally stellar (not) podcast spot with the G-Pinions guys. Thankfully I manage not to sound like a fool, so there might be more where these come from. Now, time to cease the auto-critique…

Spotted this off of Joystiq today and knew it was worth the repost…

Flickr user Matthew Johnston has put together a pretty sharp photoset showing key Liberty City landmarks and their real-world versions around New York City. I still haven’t spent much time at all in Grand Theft Auto IV yet but this is great stuff!

Matthew Johnston’s “Sightseeing in Liberty City” photoset

I have to confess that last week I purchased Arcana Heart. I was completely in the dark that Atlus was releasing this game here in the United States. Not that it mattered, I never heard of it. Until XiaNaphryz posted his thread (with a somewhat sensationalist title) on NeoGAF, although the content was admittedly taken from a well-researched Penny Arcade thread, that sold me to the game with the in-depth information.

Although some of the design choices do have a dubious otaku quality, hence all the schoolgirl age anime characters, the game design (mix and match character and arcana) and the sheer insanity of the character design — girl with devil wings? witch with a demon staff? 10 year old scientist hell bent on taking over the world while riding in a giant anthropomorphic blog of water/jelly? — are well worth feeling a little dirty. I just haven’t gotten to the point of looking at the move list and doing something other than button mashing whilst playing it.

I’m in South Beach, Miami, today. I arrived late last evening to a surprisingly mild evening — for some reason I expected it to be warmer even though I should know better.

The Winter Music Conference is in town, as evidenced by many of the clubs mentioning the WMC in their marquee and by the folks I see walking around — I think. However, I’m here for work. The event I’m flew out to staff is one of the few official WMC events on Tuesday to kick off the conference. Ben, one of my colleagues has put together quite the event: Paul Oakenfold is playing with members of the Florida Classical Symphony and a three-piece band, featuring the soundtrack he did for our game, The Bourne Conspiarcy, while Cee Lo makes an appearance as a special guest. The entire thing is being streamed live on Yahoo! and you can get there from the Bourne Sessions web site.

If you happen to live in Florida, or near it, and want a guaranteed entrance to the show, enter Joystiq’s Joyswag giveaway for a chance to get in — note that entries close at 12:00 PM ET.