Brian's Blog

Yup, I know some form of Geometry Wars has been around for quite some time bit being the late bloomer that I am I just discovered Geometry Wars: Galaxies. I'm hooked. This is one intense shoot'em up. There really isn't any story line that I can see but who has time to think about that when your screen is nearly solid with baddies?

This thing is truly Asteroids on crack.

So, just about everyone knows I talk to semi-daily knows I bought a used Nintendo DS Lite on eBay (super fun system BTW) only to learn that it's built in mic was not working. I payed $105 (including shipping) which isn't a bad deal considering a new one is $130 or so. So I sent it back for a replacement (and a free game) of which I am currently awaiting the arrival of.

The point is, after shipping costs I've just spent pretty darn close to a new DS. Not really a big deal with getting a free game and all but sometimes I can frugal myself into spending more.

Yeah well, 'tis the chance one takes when buying used stuff.

Anyway, back to Resident Evil 4 while I wait.

My friend Chris mentioned a desire to play a little Neverwinter Nights when I hang out with him and that Bioware had recently released some nice looking Premium Modules that he'd like to play. Last night I went on over and spend the $8 on Infinite Dungeons which is a randomly generated 10 level dungeon with a minor storyline but includes puzzles and the ability to dynamically adjust to your character or party of characters. Basically, it's a mindless dungeon crawl with essentially zero plot, but that's OK because that's exactly what I bought it for.

So, I downloaded this thing and in the purchase process I had to feed the website my original Neverwinter Nights CD-Key to authorize my key to play Infinite Dungeons. What I found out after I installed it and tried to play is that you absolutely can't play it at all without an Internet connection. The reason being is that it calls home to check it's validity when you start a new game, load a saved game, or save a game. The trouble is, I installed NWN on my laptop and there may be times I won't have Internet connectivity. And, sure enough, searching the Bioware forums came up with a few people who bought it for play while traveling without Internet access. Needless to say they were not all to happy of the situation because Bioware will only refund your money if the module hasn't been activated or played on-line. At least for me, it wasn't painfully obvious that was the case and if I'd want my $8 back I'd be basically screwed. I know, it's only $8 but it's the idea.

I think what I'm running into here is the future of game and possibly application copy protection. I've seen things moving in this direction for quite a long while and am honestly not surprised in the slightest. Since the number of people with out Internet access is so small this sort of thing effects such a small number that, even if Bioware really pisses them off, it will have nearly no influence on their profits for the product.

I've never liked things that phone home. You never be sure exactly what they are up to and what they are sending back home unless you have the skill to put a sniffer on the line and analyze the network traffic. Besides, what happens when the company goes under? Or decides to stop supporting the game? What about people like me who love our retro games? I hope that Bioware has the where-with-all to issue a patch removing such silly check prior to abandoning support.

I'm fairly certain that this sort of protection will be a native part of Neverwinter 2 and that having such drastic phone home methods in the premium modules is simply a test bed to see how well it is accepted.

This weekend should prove to be enjoyable. I'll be playing my regular D&D game with Ricardo, Steve, and Dann this weekend, then after that game I get to hang out with my friend Chris where we talk about various political and technical subjects and even sometimes play a game of some sort.

Cindy informed me that one of her coworkers and her husband are also into D&D, Lord of the Rings, Computers, etc etc. Essentially everything I'm into so they arranged for us to gather on Sunday to start a game of sorts with them since they've been looking for people to play with.

I'm going to be all gamed out and will have to go back to work on Monday to recover! What a tragedy...

Well, don't play it unless you have lots of free time. Free time is something I don't have in abundance anymore so no things that I should be doing are beginning to suffer. Let us put it this way, I've been playing since just before Christmas most every evening (much to my wife's dismay) and have advanced my character to level 6, only covered about 5% of the continent of Vvardenfell, and still haven't done the first step of the main quest. You could play this game for ages just on side quests alone. There are factions and guilds to join and quests to perform related to each one that let you advance in rank. When you advance in rank you get more perks. Not to mention the Great Houses, one of which you can join in your adventures. The game also has a generous amount of books in game that give an extreme amount of background to flesh out the world. In fact, there are so many books to read I could probably sit and read for a couple of hours in just the one book store I found.

Character development is a bit different that what I'm used to coming from a mostly D&D background. In this case you advance levels by practicing your skills. Experience points don't exist in the traditional sense. You have major skills, minor skills, and misc skills. You have to advance some combination of your major and minor skills by 10 points to gain a level. And the ones that advance depend on if you use them enough. On top of that, each level you advance gives you an opportunity to increase each of your ability scores, and the amount you can increase these scores depends on what attribute the skills you have improved are associated with. So, the more you use your sword, the better you get at it, and the more you can increase your strength when you level (up to a point).

The only thing that is bugging me is that, in typical CRPG fashion, you start out with skills so low that they are essentially useless and practically zero gold. So I figured, in order to get some money I had to "acquire" others property to sell since my combat and magic abilities sucked. But to steal stuff you have to be able to sneak, which was low to the point of uselessness. Which gets to the point of being a drag. Take a look at the picture over there. It's me behind an NPC with a screwdriver holding down the sneak key (left CTRL). I left it that way for a few hours and got the skill from 5 to 20 and can just barely sneak if I'm really lucky. To be fair, it's only a misc skill for me which makes it advance very slow but still. I could just pay a trainer to increase my skills but that is very expensive and I have (well had) no gold. This is only a pseudo-complaint since just about every RPG starts out the same way. This is really the only thing to bother me so far.

The thing that makes the game really shine though is the hundreds of game mods you can download. A quick Morrowind Mods Google give many hits. But the best place I've found though is Planet Elder Scrolls which unfortunately requires a subscription. Lucky for me though I'm grandfathered into a free account because I signed up ages ago. The number of mods available are just mind boggling and I really didn't know where to start or what to try adding since some mods are good and others are so buggy they can ruin your saved games. I tried to stick with things that aren't cheats. Most of what I've done are just improved textures to make the world look better. My chosen mods so far are:

• Better Bodies - Nice looking textures and smooth less segmented bodies
• Real Sign Posts - Changes the sign textures to have to actual text of the sign on it instead of the generic one from the original game. You used to have to hover over the sign and get the help tip to pop up so you knew where to go.
• Ingredient Retexture - Retextures alchemical ingredients
• Abot's Water Life - Adds a mess of wild life to the water ways of the game. You can even go fishing and collect alchemical incredients.
• PC Smithy - Lets you own a Smithy as a place of business and a way to make money. Like a real life business it takes much work to get going and profitable.
• Area Effect Arrows - An official add on. Lets you buy area effect arrows in Vivec.
• Better Heads - Same concept as Better Bodies, but makes the heads look better.
• Better Books - Put sharper, much nicer textures on the books.
• Bottle Replacer - Makes the bottles look really nice.
• Darker Morrowind - Retextures most everything in the game to look darker an d foreboding. By default the game looks much more fantasy. I like this look much better. Texture replacers like these are up to personal taste, a comparison and links to multiple replacement packs can be found here.
• Fair Magicka Regen - I've always hated the idea of magic user types to have to sleep when you run out of manna, spell points, magicka, or whatever it's called in your game. This adds a slow, fair regeneration of magicka points.
• Herbalism - By default you "open" flowers like a chest and collect what's inside. This adds an herbalism skill and when you pick an herb you may, or may not get something. Plus the plant disappears and grows back again in a month.
• Mori Estate - A house you can buy later. It contains no cheats as far as I know and just gives you a place to keep items you don't want to carry around. It also has a library where you can have a scribe copy the book for your personal collection as well as an alchemical ingredient sorter to help you keep track of what you have.
• Faylynns Signs and Banners - Replaces the banners and shop signs with very nice looking ones.
• Silt Striders are in Vvardenfel - Silt Striders are giant insects trained for use in long distance transport. This adds the chance to see some in the wild. Other wise they only are in towns where they have domestic, trained ones.
• Better Beasts - Just like Better Bodies, but for the beast races of the game.
• Weight Fix - Makes odd items like silverware have a more realistic weight. They were kind of heavy originally
• Wilderness Sounds - Talk about adding atmosphere to the game! This one is one of the best mods I've added.

My friend Chris warned me about Morrowind and how much of a life sucker it was, but I didn't listen. Perhaps I should have.

Oh, by the way, if you have an Xbox and are thinking about getting Morrowind for that remember you can't use any mods. What you get is what you get on the box.

I just finished Thief: Deadly Shadows this evening. I has some trepidation about the ending since generally speaking games tend to let me down when it comes to their end sequence. I was worried about nothing here though. Without spoiling it for anyone who wishes to play it lets just say that it was an unexpected ending. One that ties nicely in with the series and takes the story full circle. But I must say that, unless you played The Dark Project at the very least then the significance of the ending may fail to have the impact that it did on me. As with the rest of the games story, knowledge of the first two games added a great bit of depth, but wasn't 100% needed. And so it is true with the ending.

I took a few screen shots of my game to share. I added texture enhancements that improved the appearance of the game. Even at it's default though it is still a beautiful game.

So, next on the list of games to play is Morrowind. It's an older game, but won a slew of awards. Plus my bud Chris raves about it which is usually good enough for me. Besides, for $20 to get Morrowind and all it's expansions in one "Game of the Year Edition" box I just couldn't resist.

OK, so it's been a while since I've made a post (thanks for pointing that out Dann!) So I figured I'd own up to the reason why. I've been wasting away my evenings playing Thief: Deadly Shadows and all I have to say is...Wow. This is one hell of a good game. That is if you can get your head around the fact that you have to sneak around and not go toe to toe with every foe you see. I know that's contrary to what the typical game these days trains you for but once you get the idea stealth games are excellent.

Anyone who knows me knows I've been a fan of the Thief games for ages. Made by the long defunct Looking Glass Studios who were also responsible for the equally incredible game System Shock 2.

Anyway, so far I'm about 75% of the way through Thief: Deadly Shadows and I have to say it lives up to the legacy of the first two Thief games. I still have a special place in my heart for the originals so on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the best I'd have to give Thief: The Dark Project a 9.5, Thief: The Metal Age a 9.0, and Thief: Deadly Shadows an 8.5. This is mostly because the story line of the first game is so good it sets the standard for the series. And, while the stories of the sequels are very very good, they aren't as good as the original. I don't mean that as a bad thing. It's just that the first is a tough act to follow.

I think the reason it came out so good is because, according to rumor, Ion Storm managed to get together the majority of the original design team that worked for Look Glass Studios along with the original voice for Garrett. I've also been picking up on sounds from the original game being reused which is nice for the familiarity of it all. As far as game play goes it's pretty much the same except for subtle things. For instance, the game has fully dynamic lighting. This means individual object cast shadows. In the original games the shadows were static and sometimes didn't make any sense. If you were in a dark room for instance and the room on the other side of a door had a light source in it the light wouldn't spill into the dark room which is something I used to my advantage. However, now the light flows in and makes it more realistic. You can even get caught if a light source is behind you and a guard sees your shadow. Pretty cool stuff. The lock picking system is different but usable. In a way it's more realistic than the original, but how realistic can one make something as complex as picking a lock in a computer game and not kill game play? Oh, and be sure to blackjack the guards in the back of the head. The originals didn't care where you got them as long as they weren't aware of you. Now it matters.

So, there ya have it. The reason I've withdrawn into my cave. My wife even asked me not to start a new game for a while when this one is done so she can actually see me again. Now, excuse me while I get my blackjack and water arrows ready. I've got some thieving to do!

I recently finished Knights of the Old Republic 2. It was pretty much more of the same from the first one but since first one was so darn good that makes the second one good also. The only complaint I have is the super lame ending. I hate it when I play a game and you finally overcome that big bad guy at the end and it gives you a crappy ending sequence. Once you kill the bad guy at the end of KOTOR2 you essentially hop into your ship, fly off into the sunset, and then the credits roll. :/ What the heck is that?! To bad the thing you remember most about a game is the end of it.

Either way, there were several hours of enjoyment out of the game and it did have a good story line. Now it's off to Thief 3 (Deadly Shadows). I hope that one has a good ending. I know the first two were incredible games with memorable endings.

In my usual fashion of swinging between things in an almost extreme way I've once again gotten gaming on my mind. This time it's a Magic: The Gathering. For those who don't know, MTG is a collectible card game. As in it's a game where the game pieces have the potential to have value. In some rare cases, extreme value. For example, the single most valuable card ever printed is the Black Lotus which is going for $1000 to $2000 on ebay, depending on which edition it is. Way back when I was seriously into this stuff it was going for about $375 and I used to choke at that price for a piece of cardboard but now I wish I bought one or two of them. Unfortunately I just missed the last edition that this, and other expensive and powerful card were printed so I never had a chance to get one in a booster pack.

So, over the past couple of weeks I've been heading over to a local game shop called The Encounter. This is the kind of place you can walk in and generally find someone (usually kids) playing some sort of game. Unfortunately it's usually Yu-gi-oh but there are still many older MTG players there along with some Warhammer and I hear the occasional D&D. Watching those kids play I can say that the game has changed a lot over the past 5+ years that it's been since I looked at it. Actually, I'm not so sure I like the way the game is played now. It's almost too fast and relies on using cards in such a way as to be able to search through your library and pull out cards rather then using the luck of the draw and playing skill to win.

Tonight I'm heading over to an old friend that I haven't seen in years to play a little old school Magic for old time sake. It should be fun.

In a fit of gaming obsession I've finally finished Knights of the Old Republic. This one was the first game in a long while to really get me sucked in. Well, other than the Thief series of which I still need to finish the last one. No game is perfect but this one didn't have anything that jumped out at me except for when you tried to disarm a mine sometimes your character would run up to it and blow it up instead of stopping and disarming it. But that was only a minor annoyance.

Now that I'm done with this I can return to the land of the living for a short while before starting my next game, or maybe actually finishing a book on my list. I'm thinking of finishing the venerable Planescape Torment. Planescape is one of those games I've started many times and never finished. And every time I start it I think how excellent it is.

Since Knights of the Old Republic played perfect under cedega I thought I'd give Torment a shot there, but sadly cedega just doesn't cut it for some reason. I did find an interesting project called GemRB which aims to be an Infinity Engine emulator that lets you play classics just as Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape on Linux. Sadly though, it seems very much in beta so it didn't do to well for me for Planescape so I guess I'm stuck booting into Windows to play. But I'm going to keep an eye on GemRB and maybe give it a whirl when I eventually get around to playing Icewind Dale.

I keep my old WinXP partition around just for games since Windows still beats out Linux on game support. But, lately Linux is getting more games. The big ones that I know of being the Unreal Tournament Series and Doom 3. I've been playing Doom 3 a bunch lately and it's fairly enjoyable. I say fairly because, while it's very high on the creepy factor, it still seems to be lacking in story line, which is really what makes me stay up late playing a game. In all fairness though all the Doom games are known more for mindlessly blowing the bejesus out of everything that twitches vs storyline, so I'd say it lives up to it's namesake. Even so, there are elements that remind me very much of System Shock 2 such as PDAs with the audio logs and E-mails laying around. In System Shock 2 these were used very heavily to fill out the story and kept me on the edge of my seat but this isn't done in Doom 3. Even so, I don't like to play late at night with the lights off. It wigs me out just a little to much. Really though, I probably shouldn't compare it to System Shock 2 since since both are games with different goals. It's not really an apple to apples comparison. Still, Doom 3 is good. I need to make a little more time to play.

As a side note, since I'm blabbing about Linux and games I saw here on Linux Gazette about a two retro style adventure games called The Labyrinth of Time and Inherit the Earth: Quest for the Orb released by Wyrmkeep Entertainment. I played the demos of them a little and they look to be fun. Plus the price is nice at $20. They both play on Windows, Linux and Mac.

Besides these I've heard of netPanzer, Frozen Bubble, and BZFlag for Linux.

What other good games exist that are native to Linux? It would be nice to reclaim my WinXP partition.

I finally finished Thief II tonight. I literally only had to walk out of the building and the final level was done but put it off for weeks. All in all, it was very enjoyable being essentially more of what was in Thief: The Dark Project which was excellent. I think the story in TDP was better than Thief II and I was a little disappointed with the final movie but I'm still glad I played it. Now, I can actually think about playing Thief: Deadly Shadows sometime soon. Just in case TDS is more of the same and to avoid on overdose on a good thing I think I may just give Planescape Torment, Warlords Battlecry, or Warcraft III a whirl.

I spent the majority of my youth in arcades in the mall. And I could probably buy a car with all the money I spent there. I have fond memories of the 80's and the technology of the time. Between the arcades, my Atari 2600, and my Commodore 64 I'm surprised I had time for anything else. Anyway, with this in mind I bought my wife a retro Atari 2600 game controller that comes with things like Adventure, Circus Atari, Yars Revenge, Break out, and Missile Command. I thought maybe I'd be bored with these old games but both of us have been playing and enjoying most of these. Well, except for Gravitar which is just hard to play. Circus Atari was Cindy's favorite, but the joystick isn't the best way to control it, but there is a paddle retro game controller out there that my buddy Bob brought over for us to try. Much better controls for Pong and Circus Atari, plus the paddle has other retro classics like Night Driver, Warlords, and Breakout. He's lucky she let him take it home.

Then there is also the Namco one that I acquired over the holidays. This one is full of some run games from the early 80's that look 100% the same. I've read that there are some subtle differences, but it's a heck of a lot cheaper than buying an actually arcade game and much smaller. Games I've been killing time on are Pacman, Dig Dug, Rally-X, and my favorite one on the controller, Bosconian.

Some other game's I may buy are the Activision 10 in 1 and maybe the Commodore 64 30 in 1 .

I have to be careful though or I may never sleep again because I'll be up all night reliving my childhood.

I made it to the final level of Thief II: The Metal Age. So far it's an enjoyable but complex level. It's kind of a pain avoiding all the Children of Karras, which are mechanical beasts that do their best to make you very dead. They can be taken out easily enough with two water arrows in the boiler on their backs but there are a slew of them and only 12 arrows to start with. So I guess I get to be a sneaky thief instead of clunking everything on the head and dragging the bodies out of sight.

While Thief II is excellent I still think the original Thief was a little bit better mostly due to the creepy environment. It's one of those games that shouldn't be played in the dark, with headphones on. My wife scared the crap out of me once by poking me in the back while I was playing. I almost fell out of the seat I jumped so hard. The only game that tops all game environments for me is System Shock 2. That one really wigged me out good. Looking Glass Studios had a way with making games high in the creepy factor. To bad they've been defunct for quite a while.

Once I'm done with Thief II I can finally give Thief: Deadly Shadows a whirl. Deadly Shadows is essentially Thief 3 in that supposedly most of the people from LGS that worked on T1 and T2 now work for Ion Storm who make TDS.

All the Thief games received incredible reviews, but for some reason they never were majorly popular. They seem to be games that most people just don't get since they actually require clear thinking, planning, and patients to play vs just grabbing the biggest gun and blowing the bejessus out of everything that moves.. As much as I'm looking forward to TDS I may just play some Warlord Battle Cry II or Warcraft III as a break. I don't want to OD on the sneaker games.

I think it's time to start a game binge. For some reason I can't explain I flip-flop between a reading and learning binge and a waste time and play games binge. So, I figure I'm so close to finishing Thief II (finally) that I may as well just finish it. It is, after all, an excellent game. Just a few of the games on my "to play someday" list are Planescape Torment, Thief: Deadly Shadows, and Warcraft III. I've also seen really good things about LOTR: The Battle for Middle Earth, so I may spend more money on a game I won't play for ages.

Speaking of LOTR, the Extended edition of Return of the King is out as of yesterday. I'll be running out and grabbing it on the 26th provided it's not in my X-mas loot.

Oh, 5 days till D-Day.