Phases

After a good week and a half or so, I decided to shelve Elite once again. I made some pretty good money pretty quickly, at least by the standards I'm used to. The problem with Elite is that it's too easy for me to pour a whole evening in, to the detriment of other hobby and leisure activities. As much as I like the game and would like to wander the galaxy, I do have other aims for my free time.

Arguably first among my gaming concerns over the last week or two has been Dragon Quest VII. For someone with minimal experience with the series, having played some the first on NES, and otherwise only having played DQVIII on PS2, albeit to completion, I have felt oddly compelled to collect as much of it as I could, across the Super Famicom and DS and 3DS platforms. VII was previously a PSX game, but last year got a nice remake for the 3DS. It's known for being very long, around 100 hours, having a slow pace, and having allegedly bad graphics and releasing so late in the life of the PSX that the PS2 was already solidly in the market and about to enter its prime.

The 3DS remake seems to have fixed those issues, or addressed them as well as you might assume possible with the limited horsepower available to it. Random battles are gone, replaced with a compromise in the vein of Earthbound or Chrono Trigger, where the enemies are visible on the map and if you actually run into them, you fight. The graphics have had a total overhaul as well, but I suspect I might actually prefer the PSX's when I get the chance to finally play it, having never picked it up in its original incarnation. I just ordered a copy from eBay. As far as playing the game, it's a solid RPG in the classic Japanese sense, being one of that genre's cornerstone series. I've long been a fan of the genre, of course. This game feels very comfortable.

Something brought me back to Torchlight II this week. An unexpected, inexplicable urge to play more of the game I only got perhaps a quarter into when it first released, if that. Maybe it was being effectively done with Diablo III's content without being rid of the siren's call of that type of game. Whatever the actual reason, I have it re-installed and I've picked up my Engineer at level 28 and begun the experience and gear climb once more. It's fun.

P.Q.: Broodiest of Wars

I am still working on Starcraft: Brood War. I have played almost nothing but that over the last couple of weeks. What a fantastic game. It's very long, too, and not short on challenge, either. I am currently in the middle of the third mission in the Zerg campaign, the final one in the expansion. This campaign has 10 regular missions and a secret one before the finale that can be accessed if mission 9 is completed under a certain constraint. I hope to see them all. Thus far, I've been able to work through Brood War at the rate of about a mission per day, but they may be getting more difficult; certainly, the one I am on now seems pretty tough.

I am least familiar with playing the Zerg of all three races in Starcraft. They have three or four units that I still don't really understand the function of, but I'm going to need to learn them well, I think, to pull out a victory in some of these missions. I'm much closer to my goal now than I was when I picked up the game again a couple of weeks ago, but there's still a long way to go, and uphill all the way.

Not on the agenda, but partaken of nonetheless, is Dragon Quest IX. My daughter likes to play with my old DS Lite, and up until now I've turned it on and given it to her with New Super Mario Bros. booted up. She can't play it, but she can play with it, and that's enough for her, at the moment; she's more interested in Jetpack Joyride, but that's another discussion. She's also found where I keep my DS games, and over the course of picking them up off the floor a few times, I was lured back into playing one of them--DQIX. I played it for only a couple of hours back when I first got it, but I figured it would be a nice, easy, stress-free way to relax a little in lieu of concentrating and struggling with Starcraft, so I put another hour or so into the game this past Sunday. Maybe I'll keep playing it, here and there.

Few And Far Between

That is how my gaming sessions feel these days. Even with with great expanses of time between these entries, I don't have a lot to write about having played.

I made some progress through Bioshock 2 a couple of weeks back. It's a pretty good game, like the first. It lacks the punch of the first, though, and so ended up being kind of maligned and overlooked upon its release. It's very much the sequel that no one asked for. I remember 2K making noises like they would be able to mine Bioshock well past 5 games; I'm not so sure that's the case, anymore. Perhaps they will, if they count Infinite and the series re-invention it looks to be.

I also played a short bit of Fallout 2, which is nominally the RPG I'm playing right now. I need to get back and finish this one up so that I can finally start Fallout 3 sometime in the next 12 months (maybe). I actually also have been playing a little bit of Dragon Quest IX, which I picked up out of boredom and curiosity. It's a Dragon Quest game, which is pretty much 'nuff said. I enjoyed those two and a half hours or so, so maybe I'll pick it up again soon. We'll see.

The game I've played the most of over the last couple of weeks is a multiplayer shooter called Section 8: Prejudice. I'm playing the PC version, though it is available on the PS3 and 360. I wouldn't advise playing those versions, though; there's barely anyone playing on PC--I shudder to think how empty the game would be on the consoles. It's very good, though. It plays kind of like a cross between Battlefield and Halo, and it looks a hell of a lot like the later. Sure, it's kind of generic in a lot of ways, but I really like it. Its one unique aspect is how you drop from orbit into battle, meaning that you can choose just about anywhere on the battlefield to spawn into, as long as there are no AA guns to kill you on your way down. It looks like you can even land on guys to kill them, but I haven't been able to pull that off, myself. Check the game out, if you don't mind playing in games where about half the players are bots. I got it for $6 on Direct2Drive (again, I can't say I'd recommend the $15 console price, as I'd imagine it's pretty dead over there).

Last, and probably also least, Warhammer 40K: Kill Team. I picked this up on PSN last night because it was only $10 and I like 40K stuff, and I'm excited for Space Marine. It should have been a $5 game, I think. It's pretty mediocre. I don't dislike it, especially, but it's pretty mediocre. I got stuck at a hard part in the first mission, too, and couldn't power through it before I got tired and wanted to go to bed. This is parenthood, I suppose.