Duodecim?

2012. The year the world burns. In the fires of a gamepocalypse. Gameageddon has gotten off to a running start here, at 9 Parsecs.

Momentum of motivation had me roll right into Fallout 3 not long after finishing Fallout 2. I have 30 hours on my save, thus far, and I've gotten to a decent stopping point in the main quest thread, searching for my character's father. He disappeared from Vault 101 all of a sudden, and not caring for the way the Overseer runs the place, my character Nanashi set out to find him, braving the capital wasteland beginning to uncover the truth of her place of birth in the process. I'm sure that I'll eventually track down dear old Dad, and in Fallout fashion, a greater goal will be set, through the pursuit of which I'll leave my mark on the ruined wreckage of Washington D.C., and the people who live there. I'm already excited to get back to playing more.

Speaking of playing more, I need to finish BioShock 2 once and for all. I'm guessing that I'm around a third to halfway through it, and fairly lost as far as the plot goes. Or maybe the plot just isn't that good. I don't like how the antagonist Sophia Lamb was retconned into Rapture history and cast up against Andrew Ryan. Retcons in general suck. Regardless, the game is a lot of fun to play, what with the plasmids and different weapons and environmental factors to take into account while fighting splicers, Big Daddies, and Big Sisters. I want this one off my plate. I just need to set aside some time to polish it off between everything else I'm playing.

I don't believe I've written about it yet, but a helpful Call Of Podcast listener wrangled a couple of Diablo III beta keys for Lonesteban and I. I love the Diablo series, going way back to the days of the 50MB overnight download for the first game's demo. Diablo III is almost by default my most anticipated game, but it's always seemed so far away that it was only on the periphery of my mind. Well, not any longer. I've been having a blast playing the beta so far. The only thing I don't like is that it ends after a few hours. Even that's not so bad, since you can take your character and do boss runs ad infinitum. Eventually you will hit the level cap and get so much amazing loot that you can't even wear it all, though. Then you can try another of the classes. I maxed out a monk first, and I'm slowly working a wizard through, now. I'm trying to take my time, because there are special beta-only achievements that I'd like to get (and hopefully they'll carry over on my profile into the full game), but they were inactivated with the last update to the beta. I'm hoping the next update will be rolled out soon, and they'll be re-enabled.

The monk is awesome, and the wizard is just as great. I honestly don't know which I'll roll with first, once the final game is out. The other classes don't really interest me at this point, but I'm sure I'll get around to them at some point. If I have one concern for Diablo III, it's that it doesn't look like there is much point to ever creating more than one character of the same class. In Diablo II you had a lot of different choices to make in terms of skill choices and point distribution, but Diablo III does away with all of that in favor of a system that lets you re-spec your character at any point. I guess Hardcore mode will kind of negate this issue, but unless you play Hardcore, you will presumably be able to level each class to cap and not really have any reason to start more characters over at level 1. We'll just have to see how the final product ends up.

Elsewhere, I've begun Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising. It was time. I don't think there is anything else strategy-related on my plate besides my stalled Starcraft: Brood War game, only just begun. It was also the last Dawn of War II expansion on my pile, since I had dipped into Retribution a bit, already. I'll eventually finish this and then play Retribution to completion before going back to the original Dawn of War and its expansions. And hell, one day I'll finish Brood War and start Starcraft II, also. No rush; I figure I've got at least 50 good years left in me, hopefully more. Giving up fast food and working out more should help with that. All for the games, all for the games. Anyway, about Chaos Rising--I was able to import my save from the base Dawn of War II with my squad fully leveled up and kitted out. Right off the bat it seems more difficult than the base game, but I guess that's to be expected. Even a real-time strategy noob like myself (though I did beat Starcraft) didn't have much trouble with the original. I've really gotten into the Warhammer 40,000 universe over the last couple of years, and I really like the genre-meld of Dawn of War II.

Speaking of 40K, I started the Space Marine campaign over again just for fun, and also tried out the multiplayer and Exterminatus ("Horde") modes. That's a real good game, all around. I got flattened repeatedly in the versus multiplayer, but I had a good time in Exterminatus, and I'll probably play more of it over time.

Another quick hit--SpaceChem. I completed the challenge level In-place Swap, after staring at it and mucking around for 2-3 hours. I'm still only on the third or fourth planet in the game's story mode. I wonder if I'll ever be able to complete it. This is a really hard game, but it's so great at the same time.

Something else I've begun in the last few weeks is Guild Wars. I don't have the time and presence of mind to go into it very much right now, but I like it. It's old, and it's mechanics somewhat tired out by the rest of the genre, but it has its virtues. I'll write another entry on Guild Wars at a later date.

Yesterday they released a demo for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, and being a big fan of RPGs, I wanted to check out this one, a new IP from a new studio (kind of), and from EA, no less. I'd say my overall impressions are positive, despite not liking the art direction, UI, voice acting, or what I've seen of the story thus far (admittedly little). The combat is well done for an RPG, and about to the level of an action game. The game runs really well and looks great (in terms of image quality) on my PC. The problem is that I just don't have anywhere near the amount of free time I would need to get around to playing this somewhat safe RPG. It plays it too safe, I think; there's nothing slightly off-kilter or European about it to get me interested. The premise is only interesting in the superficial parallels to Planescape: Torment, and the art style is just off-putting. I could set that aside, because the graphics are nice, otherwise, but go look at my RPG pile. I wish Amalur had a little bit more of its own identity.

2012 Sea Chart to Success

I have a hell of a lot of RPGs (very loosely defined) that I want to play. I hope to visit some of these lands in the next year.

2011 Game of the Year & Recap

It's been a good year for video games. Aren't they all, though?

My Game of the Year: The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings
Honorable Mention: SpaceChem


My GOTY/HM for past years:
2010: Mass Effect 2/Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
2009: Demon's Souls/Red Faction: Guerilla
2008: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots/Gears of War 2
2007: BioShock/Halo 3

Before 2007 there do be a great sea of FFXI which does divide the present from the past, a time for which there is no recorded 9 Parsecs history...

I managed to complete a surprising number of games in 2011, given the appearance of a wild baby in early July. Here's the tally, 21 games in all:

Fallout 2
Nehrim
Assassin's Creed Revelations
Jamestown
Demon's Souls
Dawn of War II
Space Marine
Kill Team
Deus Ex
Quake
The Witcher 2
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl
Portal 2
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood
Prince of Persia (2008)
VVVVVV
Uncharted 2
Assassin's Creed II
Metro 2033
Fallout
Halo: Reach

Past years' totals:
2010: 23
2009: 19
2008: 26
2007: 15

I'm not sure what I'm going to set as a goal for 2012, if anything. I'm fairly content with the amount of money I've been spending on games, which has gone down a good bit... I think. It's hard to keep track of all the little purchases. At any rate, I spend more on coffee than games, I'm certain. That's probably what I need to cut out in 2012: trips to Starbucks. Aside from that money sink, I want to trim the Pile o' Shame. It's really been growing like a weed due to insane holiday sale deals and indie game bundles.

For now I am still rolling with the 2 out, 1 in token system, for games over $25 out of pocket.  That may be a tad lenient, considering my buying habits these days, since in all of 2011 I only spent that amount (not including credit from trade-ins) on 7 games, and I currently have 3 and a half tokens banked. I should also probably refrain from buying games in series that I'm not caught up on. No Arkham City until I've played Asylum, no Dead Space 2 until I've finished the first--that sort of thing. That would really get BioShock 2 off the pile for good, wouldn't it? I'll update later with any new parameters I think of to set on my game consumption.

Fallout 2 Finally Finito

Yes, I have finally finished plowing through the first two Fallout games! And fantastic games they are, too. They're extremely playable for being nearly 15 years old, and they really don't even look that bad, owing to the fact that they're rendered in pixel art rather than primordial polygonal 3D like a lot of games of that era. I really like how they're playable with just the mouse alone; they're simple once you get used to the interface. I would really only use the keyboard to choose dialog options and to ESC out of inventory screens and such.

In broader strokes, they play like an Elder Scrolls game, only with a narrower focus, an isometric perspective, and a turn-based combat system. Much of what else is present in the one of the two series has a direct analogue in the other. Most people reading this will probably have played Fallout 3 and/or New Vegas. I would imagine those games are even more like a combination of the two, which of course makes perfect sense given who publishes them.

I'm aware of the rich history of RPGs on the PC, so it shouldn't come as such a surprise to me that a game this full of possibilities and freedom to role-play was possible in '97 or '98 (the original and the sequel, respectively), but it does. It's probably my console gamer roots showing. Contrast these games to the biggest RPG of the day on that side of gaming, Final Fantasy VII, and... yeah. Different schools, of course. Maybe it's just that the content presented here appeals to me at this age more than replaying FFVII.

I had a blast with both Fallout and Fallout 2. Functionally, they're nearly identical, though Fallout 2 is a larger  game and features some slight refinements. I would heartily recommend playing both. Few games integrate as well into a series with what has come before as Fallout 2 does. It is set about 80-90 years after the events of the first game, the main character is a descendant of the original Vault Dweller, the regions of the Fallout world explored in both games overlap. Fallout encompassed a region of California from south of LA to south of SF, and Fallout 2 overlaps that in the south, extending north up into southern Oregon (Klamath Falls). There are several shared locations to visit in Fallout 2, where you can see what the passage of time has done to them, and people throughout the wastes refer back to the deeds of the Vault Dweller from time to time. It's very interesting, and it does a lot to reward player investment.

I'll be excited to explore more of the world in Fallout 3 and New Vegas. I have Fallout Tactics, too, though I'm not sure what to expect from that. I'll give it a go sometime after the new year. It feels good to have these two classics under my belt. They're incredible games to this day, and now I'll be able to go into the modern incarnation of the series with a trained eye.

Nehrim Done

I finally polished off Nehrim last night. The 60 hours I put into this game bring me up over 200 total in The Elder Scrolls IV engine, easily. I've had a ton of fun playing this and Oblivion, but I can't say I'll miss these systems, mechanics, assets, and art. I hope the Bethesda-published Fallout games feel different enough.

Nehrim was great. I'm astonished that such a game could be made by such a small team, and put out into the world entirely free of charge. You could tell in spots that it was a J.V. effort, if you will, but in several ways it was an improvement on Oblivion. Standing on the shoulders of giants, I suppose.

I'm not sure what I want to polish off, next. RPG-wise, it's got to be Fallout 2. But thinking of my games as a whole, I'm not sure what I'll concentrate on next. I want to revisit some of the 2011 titles I have on my short list for GOTY considerations, and there are a ton of 2011 games I haven't played at all. I don't think I'm going to buy them and do so just to have them available for consideration, though. There's something about that idea that doesn't ring true.

I played a little Brink this morning, as it had a free weekend on Steam. It was fun, and easily worth the sale price of $5, but even so, I don't know that I'll buy it. How many multiplayer online shooters does a guy need? Does the world need? It's such a crowded marketplace. Not that sales success tells the full story, but just look at the fact that it's selling for $5 only six months after release. Yeah. I think I'd rather play Section 8 or Battlefield or TF2 or Red Orchestra or Counter-Strike or....

Assassin's Creed Revelations

Because that's the game I finished the other night and finished last night. I just had a few things to mop up, but I'm done for now. I may head back into the multiplayer from time to time, but I've had my fix and am once again up to date with AC. It feels good; it's one of the few series I am current with. How was the game? It was pretty decent. It was like Brotherhood with some extra fluff mechanics and a ho-hum plot tying Altair's life post AC1 into Ezio's role as an Assassin mentor later in the timeline, and both sets of memories back into Desmond's shattered psyche to prep him for the (intimated) big huge showdown to come in the next AC title.

It wasn't great, but I like these games. I will say that the historical stuff is always great. I also really like the characters in these games, Ezio, particularly. Desmond is a fool and I couldn't care less about the modern day side of the franchise, but I do really appreciate the historical settings and the idea of an ancient shadow war between the factions of the order of the Assassins and the Knights Templar.

I think the series needs a drastic revamp for the next entry, and hopefully Ubisoft is already on track with that. Tying up all the loose ends with existing characters and settings presents a golden opportunity for another paradigm shift on the order of the changes made from AC1 to AC2. Don't fuck this up, Ubisoft.

The only other game I've been playing much of over the past few weeks is Nehrim, the total conversion mod for Oblivion that I've written of before. I'm still less than halfway through the game, plot-wise, but in terms of raw hours, I'm probably closer to two thirds done, if I had to guess. I front-loaded my playthrough with a ton of grinding and side quests and random stuff, so the payoff should be a breezy back end. We'll see about that. Nehrim is like a more plot-intensive, slightly more linear and directed Elder Scrolls game. It's very good. Definitely give it a whirl if you own Oblivion on PC and aren't deep into Skyrim right yet.

I also bought Dirt 3 from Steam a few weeks ago and I've been racing in that a little bit here and there. Not much to say other than that I am super casual, all-assists-on, touristy driver man, here. It looks really damned good on my PC, and runs at an obscenely good frame rate. And rally is a nice change of pace from the usual type of racing game I play.

Runner-Up GOTY?

It's going to be a tough thing to decide, this year. Here are some of the games I need to consider:

Dark Souls
SpaceChem
Frozen Synapse
Portal 2

Games I like well enough, but am fairly certain are not runner-up GOTY candidates:

Warhammer 40K: Space Marine
Total War: Shogun 2
Red Orchestra 2
Sengoku
Jamestown
Section 8: Prejudice
Assassin's Creed Revelations
Magicka

Battlefield 3
Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together


If there's a high profile 2011 release missing from that list, and there is, more than one, it is because I haven't played it. That's the first hurdle a game has to overcome for consideration. If it hasn't won my money and time during the calender year of its release, whatever the reason, it's not eligible. Sorry, Skyrim, sorry Gears 3, et al. Them's the arbitrary breaks.

Fighting My Way Back

I am in the middle of so many games right now, it's obscene. I don't even know where to begin to go about clearing my plate, forget the backlog! The ones bubbling up to the top of consciousness lately though, are Nehrim, which I've put a bit of time into lately, Fallout 2, which I desperately want to get back to and finish, Blade Runner, which I just want to experience, and Batman: Arkham Asylum, which I feel the most guilty about not having played through yet.

And now, lyrics from a Thin Lizzy song, the inspiration for this post's title:

I'm dustin' out/and I'm going in/
and I'm kickin' up/'bout the state I'm in/
'cause I'm tough, rough, ready, and I'm able/
to pick myself up from underneath this table

Fighting my way back
Fighting my way back

Realistically, this is not the time to be fighting the good fight. I've got my health to take care of (I need way more exercise), a kid to help out with, stuff around the house, a novel I'm trying to write (little by little), and on top of that this is the season that all the huge games come out. I'm playing Battlefield 3 every night now, even if it's just an hour or so, and I'm planning on playing Assassin's Creed Revelations the first day I can get my hands on it. That's not to mention the myriad of other games I have sitting around unplayed for one reason or another. I had to force myself to stop playing Dark Souls before I got so far down that hole my entire month would disappear. I'm pumped to get back to it at some point, though.

I guess I should give an update on Dark Souls, seeing as my last post several weeks ago was when I was just about to start it. I did start it, and I started it well as a knight. I think I am soul level 19 or so right now, and I have progressed far enough to have rung the bell on top of the undead church, and then onto find my way to the Capra Demon, which is the next fool to be felled when I get back to the game. I didn't know where to go immediately after ringing the first bell, so I tried both the graveyard catacombs and the underground grotto accessible via elevator under the Firelink shrine. I've been playing as a knight, as I said, with heavy armor, and using both sword and spear, and even an axe, briefly. I've upgraded my broadsword a couple of times, and I think I'll stick with it for a while. What a great game. I hope it doesn't take me two years again to circle back around to this one, as it did with Demon's Souls.

I feel like playing something tonight, but what? Some Battlefield, to be sure, but what else? Maybe I'll try to make some more progress in Blade Runner. I've never really played a point and click adventure game before, and I like Blade Runner, the film.

Here I Go Again

Over the last week, I wound down a two-year endeavor in playing and completing Demon's Souls. I deemed it my game of the year for 2009 only maybe about a third of the way in. Various things conspired and transpired to keep me from hunkering down and getting serious about playing the game until just recently. Partly it was due to the looming release of the successor Dark Souls, but above all else, it was just that it's time had come.

Much has been said, and I'm afraid overstated, of Demon's Souls famous difficulty. The truth of the matter as experienced players will usually say, is that the game is not so much difficult as that it requires a very considered, careful, and precise approach on the part of the player, as well as a willingness to make mistakes and the persistence to learn from them rather than give up in frustration. Demon's Souls was no more difficult than Castlevania: Lords of Shadow on Knight difficulty, or any given Halo game on Legendary. It has the potential to be, absolutely, but the true genius of the game is in just how many options it gives the player to choose from in overcoming its challenges.

There is the brute force approach; play and replay the problem section over and over until you find the best way through, or understand the enemy's attack patterns so thoroughly that you can dance right through it. There is the ability to change tactics; try one of the other dozen weapons, tools, or spells at your disposal to defeat the enemy. There is the reinforcements approach; summon a blue phantom or two to help you take down a tough boss or problematic section of a level. There is the grinding approach; farm souls and level up enough that you laugh and shrug off blows that would take half of your HP away, previously. Finally, for the truly cunning and remorseless, cheat; many bosses and tough enemies are easy to exploit with the right combination of equipment or just the right positioning.

Most challenging games, like the aforementioned Castlevania and Halo, offer one or two of these options at best. Demon's Souls gives the player more than enough tools to take care of the business at hand. What gives the game somewhat of an overblown reputation for being frustrating are the facts that death means respawning at the beginning of a level (gasp!), and the possible loss of all experience (souls) accrued and unspent during the last life. It is possible to play for a couple of hours and come away with a feeling of not having made any progress to speak of. That is because progress in Demon's Souls is not measured a percentage displayed in the corner of a map screen or any such thing. Skill at this game is a real skill, and intangible. It is not easily observed or measured, like so many modern games have conditioned us to expect.

Demon's Souls is, in some ways, a throwback to the days of the NES when games were genuinely, unrepentantly difficult, and many even lacked a method of saving your game for the next time you powered on the console. And it's great. It's a very unique game in this day and age, with a remarkably singular vision, amazing, inspired art direction, and a combat system that is very tactile and weighty. I have no doubt that this was the most remarkable and memorable game released in 2009, for my money.

So, here, a day after finally finishing off Demon's Souls, I am just about to embark on another journey sure to be long in completion, this game's successor, Dark Souls. I played a Wanderer in Demon's Souls, and focused on building my dexterity, using curved swords almost entirely. For Dark Souls, I'm leaning more toward a heavily armored Knight, and wielding a one-handed weapon with a shield.  We'll see how that works out...

Going Back

Never until recently have I been able to return to a game midway through without feeling like I needed to restart the whole thing to get back into the swing of it. Maybe it's just that I don't have time to restart every game these days, and at the same time I can rarely make myself play a game to completion at the exclusion of playing other games. I used to do that. Back in the SNES and PSX and even PS2 days I used to have a laser like focus to get through whatever game it was I was playing at the time. I might divert to play a fighter or racer or something, but as far as narrative single-player structured games went, I was monogamous. The NES days though, were more like today, with many different games to choose from, and little reason to hunker down and concentrate on any particular one. That was on a much smaller scale, though. Where now I have somewhere around 200 games at my disposal, back in the day it was maybe 10, max.

But in those freewheeling days of the 90's and early 00's, if I got halfway through a game only to be distracted by something else, I would usually be restarting that game when I got back around to it. I don't feel that compulsion so much, anymore. I did with Titan Quest, recently, but that was also due to the fact that I'd put 8 hours into a character build I was into at the time, but didn't feel like playing on restart. My most recent Titan Quest character is a very straight forward dual-wielding melee type, engineered that way specifically so that I can easily return to the game after a long absence and pick up right where I'd left off. Fallout 2 and Nehrim are two other RPGs I'm in the middle of, and feel like I could jump back in pretty much anytime and not be lost, or at least not anymore lost than I was when I last played them. I couldn't even tell you what sort of character build I have going in Nehrim, but I tend toward the simple melee in games where the choice is between that, magic-focused, and rogue-ish characters.

Case in point, I finally replaced my PS3 yesterday and have returned to playing Demon's Souls once again. When I started this game almost 2 years ago, I began as a Wanderer, which is basically an agility-focused melee class with an affinity for curved swords like falchions and katana. Lots of dodging and quick stirkes, which suits the way I'm used to playing action games. I've been playing this game in fits and starts ever since beginning, but I always come back comfortable with where my character development left off. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to carry over my save to my new PS3, and that I would have to start over with a new character. I was thinking I might go with a little bit of a beefier tankish class. Luckily that wasn't necessary.

I cleared 3-1 last night on my first time through the level. The mindflayers went down in two slices of my Uchigatana +4. I'm at soul level 58 now, and I've cleared 1-1, 1-2, all of world 2, 3-1, 4-1, and 5-1. I had been focusing on 4-2, but reapers and black skeletons get me most of the time, the gold skeletons don't do it first. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to push to the end this time, or pick up Dark Souls right away and start in on that, instead. Best to finish Demon's first, I guess. I probably won't be doing a new game+ on it though, when I can move onto whatever improvements are there in Dark Souls. With a lot of tough game still ahead of me though, it's really hard to say what I'll end up doing.

I finally finished another game I started about 2 years ago--Dawn of War II. I was only 5-6 hours from the end when I'd left off last time. I've been on a big 40K kick lately, and I also just started reading the Horus Heresy. 40K is pretty cool. Dawn of War II was also pretty cool. The single player game was kind of a proof of concept, with a lot of reusing the same maps and same basic mission types, but the way the game plays is pretty unique and a lot of fun. It's somewhere between Diablo and Starcraft. It's almost like controlling a whole team of LOL or DOTA heroes and taking on hordes of enemies as you make your way from point to point and usually either defend a location or fight a boss monster. Plus, there is loot and experience for each of your squads (you have 6 by the end of the game, 4 of which deploy at any one time). If it sounds addictive, it is.

I hear Chaos Rising is even better, with more varied mission types and additional RPG elements concerning how pure or corrupt your squads become based on your deeds and wargear. I'd like to start that game soon, but I should probably work on finishing off some of this other stuff that I'm halfway through!