Gaming

There are 82 posts filed in Gaming (this is page 8 of 9).

Are cheat codes included?

Kotaku links to a story today about video games in libraries.

The article in question makes for really interesting reading. Librarian and gaming writer John Scalzo walks through the process of developing a collection for a whole new type of media holdings. I admit that while some of the qualifications given to him for selection seem reasonable (no M-rated games), but others (A ban on Simpsons games) seem rather random.

The process for ordering the games seems to have been a larger problem than ‘selling’ the idea to adminstrative types in the first place. Sounds like some streamlining should be in order.

I would be very interested in seeing how the collection fares a few months from now. In my library experience, DVDs go mere weeks before having skip-causing scratches. PS2 games, theoretically handled by more children, will no doubt be worse. Does the library have any process for monitoring disc condition in effect?

Perplex City

Formerly known as Project Syzygy, the more recently dubbed Perplex City ARG is starting up soon.

What is an ARG you ask? Once wikipedia recovers from its power failure you can read all about it here.

Or just ask me about it. They’re tons of fun, trust me – and even better they’re free. Puzzles and thinking and plots… oh my! Gaming for the 21st century.

And Perplex City looks to be a major game with a major budget. The game runners (or PMs, for Puppet Masters, as we call them) are placing ads in major newspapers around the world to kick things off. Last week one was in USA Today, and tomorrow the New York Sun should be hit.

The plot will apparently revolve around “the cube” which the Perplex City Academy wants to recover. There’s even a possibility of a cash reward at the end of the game.

I haven’t managed to find a decent ARG to play since I Love Bees ended, so here’s hoping. If you’re interested in joining me on the journey, here’s a primer of what’s happened so far. Or of course I’d be willing to catch you up.

Oh and the main game site so far is www.PerplexCity.com. Click on the ‘Sente’ signature for our first video clue.

Dollars for Dungeons

The idea of online economies has fascinated me. You put together an online multiplayer RPG, and economic forces are soon to follow. Trade, inflation, the works. People start selling in-game goods at places like eBay. Some even manage to make a living at it. Most games frown on this type of activity, and explicitly ban sale of in-game goods for real world money.

Cnet has an article about two such games called Entropia and Second Life, among the first to actively embrace their in-game/real world economy.

I’m not sure why these mini economies are so interesting to me. Maybe because they’re a microcosm; you can watch forces which are slow in the real world play themselves out on a manageable time scale.

Call of Duty: Finest Hour

I rented Call of Duty: Finest Hour over the weekend.

Great fun, but once again really only worth a rental.

The single player game has amazingly detailed and vast levels. I’ve played a bunch of World War II first person shooters, and this is the first that (at points at least) made me feel like I’m in the trenches, like I can understand a small portion of being in that situation. This is particularly true in the first few levels in the game, defending Stalingrad.

I haven’t beaten the American portion of the campaign yet, but the Russian missions took me just a few hours, and the British missions even less. I suppose its the quality/quantity trade-off in effect once again.

I also have yet to give the Xbox Live portion a whirl, but I doubt I have the skills to enjoy it very much.

This game was really the last on my Xbox ‘to play’ list, so I’ll probably be taking some time off from anything new for the forseeable future.

Halo 2 Shenanigans

I’ve posted before about the problem of cheaters on Xbox Live, particularly in Halo 2 since that’s the only game I play online.

Now, a lighter story to balance things out.

Some of the guys I game with occasionally decide to mess with people online. Thankfully, they do it in a hilarious (instead of annoying/cheating) fashion. Just follow these simple steps:

1. Get 7 people in a party.
2. Everyone change their armor color to pink, and their icon to the bright red lips.
3. Join a matchmade 8 player game, ensuring that one random poor sap will get stuck with the 7 of you.
4. Play the Benny Hill theme song over the headset so everyone can hear it.
5. Run around crazily in the game making 3 Stooges-esque noises, or in rare cases pulling off coordinated dance numbers.
6. At some point actually play the game.
7. Sit back and enjoy the stunned comments from player #8.

Priceless.

oot and aboot

Feeling much better today, thanks. Must be one of those 24-48 hour stomach flu things. Not pleasant by any means, but could have been worse. Unfortunately ended up missing both classes yesterday and work today, but nothing I really could have done about that.

Nick pointed me to abandonia.com, a warehouse of free old DOS games. They have Chip’s Challenge! I used to play that all the time. Ah, memories…

Off to make up for everything I didn’t get done yesterday. More real content coming soon, I promise.

The ‘ol Roundup


ButtonMashing.com linked to me today (thanks by the way!) as a new blog he found that comments on gaming from time to time. Made me realize that its been far too long since I have. So I present a roundup of what I’ve been playing recently. Or more accurate, what’s been taking time away from Halo 2 online play.

KOTOR II has sucked up 95% of my gaming time. Amazing game, though I do admit to being a bit disappointed in the difficulty level of gameplay. The first couple planets are somewhat difficult, but after that it levels off quick. I think because you can play the planets in any order, the difficulty level of them all is set low. Each planet has to be beatable should you go to it first and unexperienced. Last night I blazed through Korriban in maybe half an hour. The fights should have been much harder. Or maybe I just spend too much time leveling up, I dunno. But the plot is A+ and makes up for any shortcomings. I also appreciate some of the finer details of play; gaining influence and converting your party members to Jedi has a certain satisfaction to it.

Burnout 3: Takedown was a fun rental last weekend. I normally hate racing games. I end up trying to cause the biggest wipeouts possible rather than complete the races. Finally, someone made a game where that’s the main objective! Burnout 3 is one of the most addicting games I’ve played in a while, particularly crash mode (wherein you try to cause the biggest dollar amount of damage possible in an intersection). I just gotta remember to drive a little easier if I go out right after playing… The online component was a mess though. I tried it once and after failing to join games 6 times in a row, and getting booted from one that finally worked, I gave up. Really makes me appreciate Halo 2’s implementation of Xbox Live.

Katamari Damacy remains top on my list of games I’d like to play. If only I had a PS2… I might buy it anyway just to get a copy before it disappears.

Xbox woes

I give in.

I bought a used Xbox just about 2 years ago, at first primarily to play Halo. Got quite the deal on it too, thanks to some rather arcane ebay happenings beyond my control. However, I’m paying for that bargain now. It seems that some early Xboxes have faulty DVD drives. There were three brands of drives used, and lucky me got the bum (Thomson brand) one. It’s taken some time, but the drive periodically refuses to load things. I’m told they have problems with layer transitions on DVDs.

I’ve started playing Knights of the Old Republic II, which is just chock full of layer transitions. About 1 in 3 fails and crashes the entire system, telling me that the disc is either dirty or not an Xbox game. Very frustrating to happen every few minutes in such an awesome game.

So I broke down and bought a replacement Philips brand drive on ebay. Cheaper than replacing the whole system, and I won’t lose all my save games. I paid about $60 for it, much less than the $250 Microsoft would charge me for the parts and service. Not like I have a warranty anyway. Now all I need to do is find a set of Torx screwdrivers that I’ll need to open the Xbox up when the drive arrives. Anyone know a likely place to buy such tools?

I figure I need to teach myself more about hardware replacement anyway.