A while back I came across this game called World of Goo that turned out to be well worth the $20 I paid for it. Now it is part of a special deal with 4 other games where you can name your price. As part of other indie packs, I already own two copies of World of Goo and one of Gish. I’m definitely going to check out the other 3 games. Proceeds go toward developers or charity depending on how you want to split it up. The sale ends 5/10/10

Check it out!

–update–

If you missed the deal, most of the games have now gone open source! Check out Aquaria, Gish, Penumbra, and Lugaru!

Borderlands by 2K Games is a unique mashup of and FPS and RPG. The game is rated M for a reason, there is nonstop killing and gore. If you liked Diablo 2, and enjoy FPS games, you’d love Borderlands.  They both have three playthroughs with the same missions, but higher difficulty. Also, the loot engine has random loot with 17,750,000 different possibilities. Part of the fun is the unending quest for better loot. Overall, the variety of missions is much more in-depth in Borderlands. You can play single player or multi, but with Borderlands your single player character is compatible with multiplayer games.

Last week I finally finished the first playthrough with a couple of friends that have mastered the game already. They were kind enough to start out with level 1 along with me and work through the story missions. One of my friends has beaten the game five times and still enjoys it. I think that is a testament to the quality of the game. Most of the missions are NOT just kill XX and come back, much like I remembered World of Warcraft to be. There are a few early missions like that, but overall most of them are much more complex.

I still think it is kind of funny that Borderlands takes place on the wasteland planet of Pandora. This planet is about the direct opposite of the Pandora from Avatar. Much of the landscape reminds me of Mad Max, and there are a few references to the movie it in the game as well. Another aspect that is different is that the gravity is lower. It takes a while to get used to the “moon jumps,” but you need to master them in order to complete some of the quests. There are quite a few that require some skillful hopping around to find pieces of loot. Located somewhere in Pandora is “The Vault” that only opens up every 200 years. Supposedly there is advanced alien technology, but nobody knows for sure. You play as one of 4 classes of Vault hunters guided by a ghostly girl that secretly communicates with you.

One frustrating aspect of Borderlands is that this is a console port. It is out for Xbox 360 and PS3, but this review is for the PC version. The UI can be frustrating for gamers that are used to playing PC games. If you have and Xbox controller for Windows, you can just plug that in and play without changing any settings. I’m a mouse and keyboard FPS player, so I did quite a bit of customizing. Hosting multiplayer games uses Gamespy for matchmaking, and it is rather difficult for users to host if they are not familiar with changing settings in routers. I found the following thread helpful for opening up the ports needed to host games. Some people simply aren’t able to open ports up, so that can throw in some snags. That said, hosting doesn’t work for me the first time in many cases. If I have been playing for a while, I have to exit out and re-launch the game and then my friends can connect. Also, it is not possible to join a private match on the host. They have to send you an invite, or you have to wait until another friend on your list joins, then you can join off of them. I’m sure this is a bug, and hope it is fixed eventually.

Another frustration is the game map. Having played Star Wars Galaxies in the past, I took for granted how useful an overlay of the map is. If you want to check where you are in Borderlands you have to pop up the map. If you are in a car, it stops you. There is a compass with a flashing diamond for your destination, but the terrain on most of the areas makes getting there anything but a straight shot. One workaround I found was to have a friend ride as a gunner to keep the map open and give directions, “Turn left, turn right, go straight.” It is kind of comical at first, but it works.

On the topic of driving, the controls are not anything like vehicles in other FPS games. It took a while to get used to, but I still find myself driving into rocks now and again, especially when using the turbo boost. If your car flips over, you have to hop out and melee and it to bounce it around and eventually flip over. Another quirk is that if you have 3 people and only 1 car, you can push the third person along in front of the car at full speed, and even boosting. The entertainment value of doing this doesn’t seem to wear off.

One of our crashes

Aside from a few problems, the game is very well done. The multiplayer is balanced so that the more that play, the harder the enemies get. I only wish there was an option for more than four players. On many occasions I’ve had 5-6 friends on, and we can’t all fit in one game. The great thing about multiplayer is that each class has unique class mods they can equip that can help the team. Each mission is different, requiring a unique mix of skills and weapons. The format is fairly open ended, with main story arc missions spawning off smaller side missions. Also, you don’t have to do all the missions in order, just the main story arc ones.

As far as the graphics are concerned, I don’t think I have ever seen a game quite like this one. The environment is cell shaded with hand painted textures. The characters are not quite 3D, but also not 2D. It’s kind of hard to explain. Take a look at some of the trailers and you will see what I mean. The engine seems to run fine on my Nvidia 260GTX on full quality, so I don’t think it is quite as resource hungry as some of the newer games that have been released recently. I highly recommend this game. There are two downloadable content “expansions,” but I haven’t played any of those yet.

A couple days ago I was able to visit with some friends I haven’t seen in a few years. After one of them cracked open a bottle of wine, we eventually ended up talking about gaming. One thing led to another and one of my friends asked, “Have any of you heard of Mazes and Monsters?” In mere moments we were watching one of the most horrible acting performances I’ve ever seen. I wasn’t sure if I should be shocked or amazed. In retrospect, the alcohol definitely enhanced the experience. We ended up adding our own commentary, MST3K style. About half way through I regretted that we didn’t start recording our comments to dub in later on. My friend actually had the recording equipment to do it too.

The movie starts out with a scene with a bunch of police cars and fire trucks responding to a missing persons report. A university student got lost in some caverns in a game of Mazes and Monsters that got out of hand. I was battling with trying to figure out if this was supposed to be some type of spoof or just an anti Dungeons and Dragons flick. After watching it all, despite how close it comes to seeming like parody, I think they were actually serious. In the midst of all the no-name actors this guy by the name of Tom Hanks shows up in one of his first roles. I’m sure if you ask him about it today, he’ll try to deny any involvement with this feature.

I’m pretty sure that anyone that has played classic DnD would be amused by this movie. Just watch it with a few friends over a few drinks, and I am sure everyone will have a blast. Here is a clip, it doesn’t contain any real spoilers.

So it looks like all of the crazy costumes are popping out of the woodwork now that Halloween is coming around again. Brain Alien over at What the Photo brings this pic to my attention again. It brings back memories. No, not those of Sith Vixen in her Femtrooper outfit, which by the way is one of my TOP incoming links on Google (currently ranked #1 for image search).

The memories it brings back to me are those of my first Nintendo games. Every once in a while I get nostalgic, and feel the urge to play my old games. Metroid and Legend of Zelda were my first two “console” games. I earned the money for my NES and games through my own sweat (TRUE, I lived in Phoenix, AZ) and blood (not so true) delivering newspapers in the summer during my spare time. OK, that’s a story my wife’s heard way too many times, so I’ll move on. I still have my original NES and all of my games boxed up in long term storage. If I feel the need to play, I whip out my trusty emulator, but not everyone has access to the ROMs or the patience to get and emulator working right.

I knew that a few years ago the Nintendo’s patent on the NES expired in the US around 2006 or so. Since then a site called VirtualNES popped up. I didn’t realize it, but according to some very sound arguments, their site is legal. . Consider it a free online arcade. If you’ve never played Metroid, check it out!

Play Metroid Online — note, requires Java plugin

Controls:

The guys over at Sylien software have recently released Tradewars Rising v1.1. At first glance, I can see that this newer version is much more polished. The only downside I saw was that the built-in macro system has been temporarily removed. I’m not sure exactly why this was done, but it will be returning later in a more streamlined form. There are several “BIG” games started by the developers to spark interest in the new version, but I find myself without the time to use up all of my turns by hand.  If you’ve never heard of or tried this game, please follow my link and join me! For a little bit more information, please check out my initial post about the 1.0 version.

Ha, so I’m addicted now

I’m not sure how many of you remember the good old days playing online games through a BBS (Bulletin Board System). In1994-1995 I ran a small one line BBS called The Black Lodge back when I lived in Phoenix. Among other door games I hosted a small TradeWars 2002 game on my BBS and played quite a few other games on other boards. About 1996 or so I migrated to mainly using this new thing called “The Internet” and rarely dialed into a BBS anymore. Sometime around 2001-2002 I ended up discovering several telnet boards that were hosting Tradewars 2002 tournaments. I got back into my grove and actually competed in the 2001 Battle of the Elite (BOTE). The gameplay through telnet was quite a bit different for me than back in the BBS days. Much of the work I did in my corp was through REXX scripting. I had a 2nd computer that was logged in 24/7 defending our bases ready to photon torpedo any attackers and destroy them in less than a second (if possible).  I lost interest for a few years and started playing again around 2005 or so, then didn’t really have the time to dedicate to the game to compete well.

Sometime after that I learned about a new browser based game now known as TradeWars: Rising. I’ve been following this game since developement was announced and am impressed with how much it has progressed. Version 1.0 has been released and 1.1 looks like it is just around the corner. The games are split into two categories: Turn Based and RTS. The turn based games are closer to the classic TradeWars gameplay. The RTS games are a little different and last only an hour or so. There are free basic accounts, but you can get more option for paid premium accounts.

If you want more information, please check out the forums.

One of my friends sent me an IM today saying he was reading a funny article about a Star Wars Galaxies CSR/GM. It’s been a few years since I’ve played, but I still have fond memories of my time in that game (2003-2005). Anyway, if you currently play, or did in the past, check the article out. On a related note, I’ve been following the SWG EMU project, and it looks like they are coming along quite nicely. Former players that enjoyed the days before the Combat Upgrade or New Game Enhancements, should check it out.

Ok, I’m going a little bit Battlestar Galactica crazy this week. This made me look up an old project that I found during Season 3. Just over a year ago I ran across an amazing new demo of Beyond the Red Line (BtRL). This flight simulator uses the revamped Freespace 2 Engine and a TON of fan made models and mods. There are only 3 campaign missions, but there is multi-player support. I played this a lot back in November/December of 06. Sometime after that I moved on to other things, partially because it became harder to find good multi-player games to join. It looks like the developers have kept up their hard work, and have been rewarded with the #1 Independent Game of the Year for 2007 over at ModDB.

A full campaign is under development, but for the time being the main content will be created by other fans. One of the interesting features is that anyone can create their own missions using the FRED editor. The interface looks a bit too intimidating for me to work with, but I’m sure other people will have no problem with it. I’ve helped test a couple custom missions which required some tweaks here and there. The possibilities seem endless.

Another important feature is that the physics engine has been modified so that you can do maneuvers similar to those performed in the TV show. You can rotate and blast someone behind you without changing direction. Back when I played it, you could turn on rotation and turn around, then kick in the afterburner and immediately be going the same speed in the new direction. This wasn’t very realistic (you’d be turned to mush), and from what I’ve read, it has been addressed since the last time I played. I’m hoping that as the project gets closer to completion that there will be easier to find multi-player matches.

Here are a couple of game play videos. These are low-rez on YouTube, but you can get the high-rez over at the official site’s video page (requires the free DivX web player).

I just ran across an interesting post about free to play MMORPGs. These are on about the same level of retail pay to play games. The game model for these includes ways to purchase items or other things with money, but you can still play for free. One that caught my eye was Space Cowboy Online, which would give me a chance to use my Saitek x52 joystick and throttle. Archlord also looks pretty good as a fantasy style game. Check out the full post here.

I figured that I should add a review for Star Wars Galaxies because I played for two and a half years. I can’t really remember when SWG was announced, but as soon as it was I signed up for the beta. I didn’t get invited until Beta 3, but I was still thrilled. A major thing that set SWG apart from other MMORPGs was the ability to dabble in different professions, or even surrender skills to start a new template fresh without starting a new character. Also, there was the fact that we could build our ships with custom parts and battle against each other in space. Unfortunately, the space portion was not finished by released and was later released as the expansion Jump to Lightspeed.

From launch day I set out to be one of the best Weaponsmiths on the server. During the beta I was drawn to crafting because the developers said that user crafted items such as weapons and armor would always be better than loot drops. This was true for a while, but eventually better loot started dropping, including “Exceptional” and “Legendary” weapons that were so powerful that a single player could take out a small army. Initially there were simple loot drops such as Krayt tissues and vibro motors, but eventually exceptional components started dropping also. The crafting game shifted to hoarding the best loot and in most cases a crafted weapon with good loot parts could not compete with an exceptional dropped weapon. To add insult to injury the veteran reward “Anti-Decay Kit” ensured that exceptional weapons would never wear out and break.

This didn’t just throw off the balance of PvP, but also screwed up the economy as well. After the first Combat Upgrade (CU for short), crafting items was limited by stat caps which after a certain point no matter how good your enhancer was, the weapon could not be improved. This was unfortunate because most of the quest reward weapons from Rage of the Wookiees were better than even a caped crafted weapon. In any case, I saw that eventually most weapons would be capped and there would be little or no diversity in weapons.

Sony Online Enterntainment screwed over the game in so many ways, but none would match the fiasco that ensued after they announced the New Game Enahncements (NGE) just a few days after the 3rd expansion, Trials of Obiwan was released. They radically changed the way the game was played. They took a game with almost 30 professions and reduced it down to 9, makding Jedi, which used to be VERY hard to unlock, a starting profession. In crafting they removed all stats from subcomponents, making it extremely easy to cap resources. Those that had spent millions of credits on enhanced weapons now found about all crafted weapons equal in a single stroke. Also, SOE removed decay completely from crafted items, making return sales and repairs a thing of the past for crafters.

Twice I have returned to the game during their “veteran trials” and I haven’t found any reasons to return. The new game style isn’t something that makes me want to play over and over. I was sad to see they did very little with the space portion of the game, because that was one of the things that kept me playing after the first Combat Upgrade. I’m pretty sure I will reactivate at least one more time to finally give away all of my resources and items before they get packed up into my datapad. I have to give SOE some credit, because they have added a lot back which they took away when the NGE was released. Many of my friends say that the game is still fun, but I’ll leave that for everyone to decide for themselves.

View my complete goodbye to SWG post here. I also created a goodbye video

I’m currently watching the progress of the SWG Emulator project. I plan on playing on the SpraticNet server once the EMU is released. Hopefully some day soon I can play SWG again as it once was.