Earlier this year in the summer I went back to SWG for the huge “Oops, we lost all of your credit card information” 45 day trial from SOE. It seemed to be a last ditch effort to regain the trust of the consumers that Sony let down. I have went back to SWG several times over the years since I quit at the end of 2005. Most of the times were for free Veteran trials designed to draw players back to the game. Each time I returned, I played a bit, but decided that the game still was not worth playing. I found it interesting that toward the end of the 45 day trial this year, I was considering renewing. Crafting for Weaponsmith regained the complexity it had before the NGE, and if anything far exceeded it. I really could make a weapon that was as good or better than looted weapons or quest rewards. I also reconnected with some old friends, and made a few new ones. I was still on the fence when SOE announced that SWG would end on December 15, 2011. It seemed I dodged a bullet, avoiding being drawn back in.

Almost immediately, most of the old and new friends I met dropped off the map. The ventrilo channel we gathered on seemed like a ghost town. I finished out the few days left of my 45 day trial and decided it was a waste of time to renew if nobody I knew was still playing. Not long after that, SOE announced that active players would have billing stopped for the last few months of play. It took me a while, but I decided to renew just before the cutoff so I’d get those last few months for just $15. I figured I could play a bit more and about $5 a month wasn’t bad for any type of entertainment. Sadly, it seemed that nobody else saw the need to play.

I logged in just a few times over the last month, recovering some uber ship parts from a friend and blowing up the Star Destroyer in Deep Space a few times for old time’s sake. Out of over 300 friends on my friends list, not one was online until yesterday, December 15, 2011. Slowly, a few friends popped up on my last as the evening went by. I chatted a bit with Aliera (former Exiled Force guild member), Fragpuppie (good Entertainer friend from waaay back), Cobie (from PACE guild), Kobie (from PACE guild), and Icarus’ (Shipwright that helped me out during my 45 day trial over the summer).

I headed to my shop and took a few screenshots, drove around Coronet and didn’t really see anyone around. My next stop was Mos Eisley and there were maybe 10-15 people there. I hopped on the forums to see where the “events” were, and decided to go to the Sarlaac pit. There were maybe 15-20 more people there running around, with some infinite fireworks popping off every few seconds. I ran across one person that said he still had a few of my weapons from back in the day. That was very good to hear. I’m amazed that those weapons are (were!) still hanging around almost 6 years after I stopped making them. About 45 minutes before the servers were supposed to go down, I lost connection and the server showed up as “loading.” For a few minutes I figured that SOE would just write Chilastra off and not worry about fixing it. A few minutes later it was back online.

I logged back in and did a few chores around the house. About 5 minutes before the scheduled end, I hopped in and switched to the ventrilo channel for the old PACE guild. I asked where they were, and they said to come to Endor to watch the Death Star. I did not think I could make it in time, but with the use of my Slave I ITV, I quickly traveled to Bestine, then took the my Advanced X-Wing to the Smuggler Outpost on Endor. I walked up a hill to meet Cobie and Kobie for the end of the server. We took a few screenshots and prepared, wondering if there would be something awesome like the Death Star blowing up Endor or something like that. We were very underwhelmed when all that happened was a message popping up on the screen, seen countless times before, but this would be the last.

“Connection to SWG lost!”

It seems kind of odd that I post a review of a Humble Bundle game, then just a few days later, a new one comes out. I’ll keep it short and sweet this time. The Humble Indie Bundle #3 is out with 5 games, name your price. You get a key instantly redeemable on Steam or you can download them directly. I already have Crayon Physics Deluxe from a while back and highly recommend it if you like physics based games. The levels get pretty damn hard, and to be honest I’ve never finished all of them. The other 4 games look pretty cool, so check them out! Proceeds go to any combination you want of the developers, Child’s Play Charity, Electronic Frontier Foundation, or the Bundlers.

One thing I like about the Bundle sales is that all of the games are DRM free and work on PC, Mac, and Linux. Another thing I’d like to add is that if you plan on just donating a penny, Santa is watching!

–Update–

They just added 2 new games and also you get Humble Bundle #2 if you donate above the current average price!

Revenge of the Titans is the best tower defense game I’ve played so far. RotT has skill trees that span about 5 different “worlds”. The game plays differently depending on what skill tree you pick. There is a Campaign, Endless, and Survival mode. One thing I did not pay attention to is that Survival mode uses your research tree from the last level in that world. This can definitely impact your Survival Mode times if you were holding off for something critical like barriers until just after the next world. Anyway, I managed to get the top time on survival and held it for a few weeks. Right now the record is around 3 hours (scratch that, 6 now!), which is super hard to do. No, you don’t have to play a level for 6 hours, you can hold down Tab to fast forward the level. So far I’ve done at least 3 playthroughs. Once just after the Humble Bundle, another a few months later just before tank droids were added, then again just after.

My one gripe is that the research trees are hidden except for your next “level” up. I found that very annoying and ended up looking up the wiki. Some people claim that is a spoiler, but I disagree. There’s an algorithm that adjusts the difficulty depending on how much cash you are saving up, so you are always kept on your toes. The basic summary of the algorithm is that the more money you end up making and saving, the harder enemies are. This ends up keeping you on the edge of destruction quite a bit. I restarted levels several times after my approach failed, but never picked the restart with easier difficulty option.

This game has a high re-playability factor and is also highly addictive. After a few nights of multi-hour gaming sessions, I found myself dreaming of placing towers in just the right position to maximize my cash. The survival mode is brutal, but satisfying when you see your name rise up on the leader board. I highly recommend RotT for anyone that likes tower defense games. Sure, there are dozens of free variants you can play in a web browser for free, but I don’t think any of them have he same depth as Revenge of the Titans by Puppy Games. Check out the official site, or the Steam store link. Keep in mind that if you purchase through Steam, you do not get free access to the Linux version, just Mac and Windows.

Earlier this year I posted about the original Humble Indie Bundle. Well the guys that brought us the first one are back just in time for the holidays! The games this time are Braid, Cortex Command, Machinarium, Osmos, and Revenge of the Titans. I have had Braid for a while and liked it. It’s platformer with time travel. I just got Osmos a couple weeks ago from a friend through a Steam multipack sale. Osmos is a great game if you like physics and casual play.  Check out the official sites to try before you buy if you want. Either way, it is a great deal. Help support indie developers and charities this holiday season!

The Humble Indie Bundle #2

The original bundle users got a Steam unlock code in the mail. Check out the Wolfire blog if you missed that email.

-edit-

They just announced you can get Bundle #1 if you donate above the average AND activate both on Steam! All those that donated before the announcement get Bundle #1 regardless of how much they donated. How cool is that?

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