The Guild in case you’ve never seen it. There are some spoilers in this episode for previous seasons obviously.
Category Archives: Games
Felicia Day made me Cry!
With laughter.
I posted ages ago about The Guild, I wasn’t really sure what it was but I’d seen a link to a humorous Christmas thing they did. At the time, I didn’t know who Felicia Day was either. Sue me. I didn’t really *get* the Dr Horrible thing, I don’t really enjoy watching lengthy movies or episodes of anything on my PC. I watch that stuff on my TV, in the comfort of my lounge. While lounging. So I don’t really do web TV stuff.
Anyway, time passed and I heard more about Felicia and realised who she was, and saw her in an episode of House, started stalking following her on twitter, etc. She’s funny. And cute.
I spotted that The Guild was available on DVD at Amazon (.com only, sadly) but I thought what the hell, people say it’s funny. So I bought seasons 1 and 2 and Dr Horrible’s Sing-along-Blog as well. Due to the superb small print, it actually cost me almost double the price to actually get them in the UK (due to Post Offices charges, not tax, I might add), but such is life. Maybe the world isn’t that small after all.
The DVD’s have sat in the ‘must watch these soon’ pile for ages – and today fate intervened. Our Sky+ box is on the blink, I think it’s the new viewing card, but the box crashes, hangs or won’t power on with the new card in (works fine with no card, but obviously, no Sky channels). I needed something to watch and The Guild was at the top of the pile.
It’s hilarious. It’s funny and entertaining in its own right – but if you’ve ever played any online game with a kin, guild, clan, alliance or any other collection of people, it’s on a whole different level of funny. In the same way that it’s obvious to me Scott Adams works at the same place I do, it’s clear that Felicia Day was in my guild in EverQuest. She probably even let my Warrior die one day while I was reviewing the finer points of tank aggro control and she was getting a drink or something.
Basically, Felicia Day let me die. True story (maybe).
Myself and Grete watched both series straight through, and the gag reels and some of the commentary. The series revolves around members of an online gaming guild (for a roleplaying game), and their personal issues. If you’ve been in a guild / kin / clan / whatever you will recognise these people. You will recognise yourself (if you have any sense of irony), and if you can laugh a little at yourself you’ll laugh a lot at the show. Marvel as the control-freak guild/raid leader organises this collection of sex-starved-stalker, perpetually-afk-mother-of-three, younger-than-you-all-dps-monkey, late-with-heals-because-of-life-healer and manipulative-sex-kitten. Laugh as they have their first real-life meeting. Shudder as you recognise the things they say and do and wonder when Felicia was watching you that closely.
So while I’m late to the party, I did eventually get here and drink my fill. I strongly, strongly recommend you go watch this. If you can cope with it online, start there, but if you’re like me, the DVD’s are a perfect choice. And don’t forget to buy their new single (itunes link, youtube link).
Seeking a web 2.0 app for Quest Tracking
I’m looking for a particular kind of web 2.0 app, but can’t track down something which does what I want. It’s mostly related to MMORPG’s but I can imagine non-gaming uses for it. If you have a bunch of people all at different stages of some kind of activity which itself has multiple stages and sub-stages, it can often be hard working out who’s at what point.
I’d love an app in which you could create multiple personalities (characters) and set up these tasks (quests) with all their sub-stages (other quests) and then let people track their progress. You would be able to inquire as to the progress of a specific character, or a collection of characters. Tasks could have pre-requisites or tasks which must be completed first, etc.
I can (and have in the past) knocked together something simple which does something similar, but I get bored easily doing web development and a lot of it is very repetative, also I’ve never really gotten to grips with the 2.0 side of web 2.0. Do you know of any app out there that does this? Maybe it’s a project management tool that allows multiple people to work on the same tasks at different rates, or maybe it’s a specific gaming tool?
Let me know if I’m missing the obvious.
Dead Space
I’m really enjoying games on the PlayStation. I have to say that it’s a much more engaging activity than playing similar games on a PC with the keyboard. I didn’t realise how much I disliked playing things like Bioshock with the keyboard vs the PS3 controller (only the demo, but it still stands true). After enjoying Resident Evil 5 (and still going back to it now and then to play through on a harder setting), I thought I’d give Dead Space a go. I really wanted to play Left 4 Dead after hearing good things but it’s not available on the PS3 and due to my comments a second ago I won’t be getting it for the PC. On a side note, this is one area where Microsoft and all the major console manufacturers really piss me off, but I may save that for another post (unless I already moaned about it in the past).
So anyway, saw Dead Space second hand and had seen a review on TV which looked cool, and some clips on the web so picked it up. It’s superb. The gameplay is engaging and the graphics are well done, but what really sets this game apart as an experience is the sound and music. Oh. My. God. The sound drags you in and sticks you in the middle of the game, ramping the tension and excitement levels through the roof. We’ve got an as-cheap-as-you-can-get surround sound system, with badly located speakers, but the game still managed to freak me out completely. The range of ambient sounds is huge, and they really fit the locations down to a tee. When you’re walking down a badly lit corridor and you hear something scuttle overhead in the air ducts, you really, really, want to look up in the real world.
You can hear things bumping into others things, items being dropped, canisters being knocked over, foot steps, squelches and any number of ambient noises which really make you feel like the experience is that much more real. The music is excellent and the non-ambient sound effects are pretty impressive too. The most accomplished element of the sound though for me is when you’re character is in a vacuum. Ok, vacuum’s should transfer no sound, but total silence wouldn’t be much fun. The quiet whump whump whump of the pulse rifle instead of the regular gun noise was just so excellent. The vacuum noises just increased the sense of claustrophobia that the rest of the game imposes.
Overall it was really enjoyable, and although the actual story is weak in places the action was engaging and the slightly different approach to combat made it more interesting (headshots are not your friend in Dead Space). The sound made sure the game went from ‘fun’ to ‘adrenaline fuelled fun’. If you like survival horror, sci-fi horror, survival sci-fi horror, shooting dead things, and being scared to go to the toilet on your own, Dead Space is for you.
Short controlled bursts
Is Aliens one of the most quotable movies of all time, or is it just my imagination? What makes it so quotable? Is it that I spend a lot of my time moving around in tight spaces armed with a pulse rifle? Is it because I long to join the Space Marines and wake up in my underwear after an extended sleep? Probably not. But the film does have lots of excellent short quotes for nearly every occasion (that involves shooting things).
I played Dead Space on the PS3 today, it’s fun (in a scary OMG what’s that moving over there OMG it’s going to eat my face) kind of way. One of the weapons is a Pulse Rifle. I said today at least three times, short controlled bursts, to remind myself how best to use the weapon.
As if,
- it’s a real weapon
- I actually know how to use one
- I was shooting real aliens
It’s funny really. The funniest moment of course was 10 seconds after reminding myself to use short controlled bursts, a necromorph jumped out of an overhead vent and landed on me and I unloaded a full 50 round clip into it in one continuous long uncontrolled burst.
Resident Evil 5
Despite not being very good at ‘shooters’, I picked up a second hand copy of Resident Evil 5 for the PS3. I’m playing it on the easiest level it has and it’s fun, certainly engaging. I was frustrated by the first ‘boss’ encounter which seemed to auto-kill me every time I tried until I worked out I had to get out of the room, but after that it’s been entertaining.
The only major downside is probably because I’m playing it on easy, which means my inventory gets full quickly because I don’t chew through healing stuff (don’t get me wrong, I suck enough that I die and I still need to use the healing things, but I’m not using them so quickly that they don’t sit in my inventory for ages). Also, I know I’m not making effective use of grenades, which is why I usually end up selling them by the bucket load.
One thing I do like a lot, even though it’s not entirely visible to me, is that the game adapts the difficulty even withing the set difficulty levels, based on how well you’re doing. So if you die a lot, the enemies get a little easier and if you’re doing really well and not getting hit, they get a little tougher.
There are enough checkpoints to avoid too much frustration of re-doing stages, and there’s a checkpoint before any moment which can lead to sudden death. There’s also a good range of different styles of game play. A lot of it is moving around carefully and killing the bad guys, there’s some out-right grenade your way out of a mess, some cut scenes which rely on you hitting the right buttons when prompted to avoid deadly danger, different kinds of boss fights and some nice tactical elements. My favourite moment so far, was entering an area filled with zombie-soliders in tactical gear, and watching them come into the room in single file like you see SWAT / military types in movies do. You have to hide behind crates and pop around while they reload to take them out, moving your way through the room. It was such a different style to the early crazy-zombie encounters and very refreshing. I really enjoyed that.
I also like the way you can stop at any point, restart the game, but keep your gear. For someone as inept as me, this gives me the chance to build up some decent weapons (by upgrading them), and then trying the game on a harder setting (like, normal) without getting immediately wasted.
All-in-all, I’m surprised at how much I’m enjoying it, I was looking for something with a more roleplaying element, and when the shop didn’t have anything I sort of picked up RE5 expecting to be frustrated. But it’s proven to be engaging, entertaining and fun.
D&D 4e Rules I got Wrong
Probably a recurring theme, but here’s the first 4th edition D&D rule that we’ve been doing wrong
1. You only roll once to attack, even when you’re about to Critical.
It looks like we skimmed the rules around this section, or we read them and then forgot them, or we just plain got them confused. When you roll to attack, if you roll a 20* then you automatically hit. You also have the chance to cause a critical hit. The determination of whether it’s a critical hit is simple. Does your total attack roll score enough to hit. If it does, you criticalled, if it doesn’t you still hit, but for regular damage.
So if the enemy AC is 23, and you roll 20, and add 2 for a total of 22, you hit but don’t crit, if your total turned out to be 24, you would have caused a crit instead. This gives you the chance to hit something 1 in 20 times that you might never otherwise be able to hit, and also gives you an increasing chance to crit against creatures as you increase your attack bonuses off of that automatic hit.
Let me know if I’m still wrong 😉
* A 20 is always an automatic hit, some weapons have an increase critical hit range (19-20), if you roll a 19 and the total is enough to hit, you crit, but if you roll a 19 and the total is not enough to hit, you miss and don’t crit. Only a natural 20 is enough to automatically hit, no matter what the weapon.
More encounters
Wrote a couple more 4th edition D&D encounters last night, again won’t really know how well they play out until the characters get to them (maybe this week, maybe not, depends how quick we get through the remaining encounters in the ‘intro’ adventure).
I knocked up a quick spreadsheet (yes Grete), which does the work of adding up the numbers so you can play with how many of each creature type you want included. That makes it easy to move between a load of minions and a few tough mobs, to more tough mobs and fewer minions while staying within your XP budget.
I did flirt briefly with the idea of signing up to WoTC’s D&D Insider thing which gives you access to some online tools, but decided not to in the end, we’re on a budget this month for one, and secondly I think I can probably hack together anything I really need. We used to do all this by hand you know 🙂 I’ve enjoyed working out the maps for the encounters as well, trying to take into consideration the different kinds of terrain and situations that affect abilities, to spice things up.
The three encounters are sort of bridging encounters between the starter adventure and the published module I want to run. I’ve added some treasure although it’s a bit of guesswork as to how much I should be giving out. All-in-all it should be enough to get the PC’s to 2nd level and give them some excitement. We’ll see if they turn into pushovers or are so deadly the PC’s die three times over.
D&D 4e – Creating Encounters
I tried my hand at creating an encounter last night using the guidelines in the 4e DMG – and I have to say, I found it a lot more intuitive than it was in v3, and none of the random guesswork and knowledge of creatures required in 1st and 2nd edition.
We’ll see how it plays out when the party meets the bad guys. I can see that it could turn out a little formulaic, but then it’s based on a formula so there’s always going to be that risk, the difference will be how well a DM can turn things around to give the same results without always ending up with the same encounter structure.
I created a 4th level encounter for a party of 5 1st level characters, which makes it a pretty tough encounter. I love minions, in older versions of D&D you’d end up to 2 or 3 tough creatures and the fight would feel small, with 4e the encounter has 11 creatures and feels much larger and epic even if 6 of those have essentially 1hp. I tried to make sure the terrain played a role, giving the enemy cover and adding some terrain which slows movement, and then picking creatures which could take advantage of that (don’t want to say *too* much since my players are reading!)
I certainly feel more confident that the encounter will at least be appropriate, without having to test it too hard or run through too many details, and that leaves me more time to think up exciting situations and more encounters. I’d love more electronic tools for doing this, but I’m not going to pay Wizards for theirs, I may have a go at putting some basic creatures values into some spreadsheet tables and just giving myself the option to quickly build encounters and add the XP totals as we go, which is the only non-creative hard bit.
I may post the encounter was the players have defeated it.
HeroQuest!
I loved HeroQuest, even though I never really got to play it enough. I have several versions, and some expansions, in various states of repair, and that means I have a lot of plastic mini’s that came with the game. I’d mostly forgotten about them until last week, when I was wondering about getting some figures for our D&D sessions. It suddenly occurred to me I probably had enough stashed away (I wanted something durable, and lightweight that we could chuck about on the battle map and not worry too much about) so I collected them all up and yep, there’s loads.
Mostly unpainted though – but I set about fixing that. Finished up all the zombies (8 of them), and decided to start on the goblins (since both myself and Chris need a lot of zombies and goblins in the games at the moment). I asked Grete if she wanted to lend a hand, and she did, helping paint her first miniatures.
Here’s the resulting goblin hoard (I base coated them yesterday so they’ve gone from nothing to game-ready in 2 days).
There’s 18 of them all-together including one I painted years ago. It’s a superfast paint job, base coat, wash, dry brush, clothing, wash, drybrush, detail. But it does the job for miniatures you’re going to be gaming with.
Now, if only I knew where to get the 4 red dragons in hard waring plastic resin I’ll need for the next game … 😉