Slightly Off Center Video Game Musings
I hope our occasional forays into the world of video games on this blog aren't overly annoying. The truth is, at least for me, video games are the form of gaming that fits best into my life at the moment. They take up almost no physical space; the cost/benefit ratio is good, particularly if you enjoy as much old school stuff as I do, and you can get a quick fix in just a few minutes. Wireless surround sound headphones are amazing for sleeping baby and spousal compatibility. Still, I don't think I'll be bringing UFC home any time soon.
One diversion that's distracted me from nightly reading recently is my Nintendo DS. Yes, 99% of the games are unbearably kiddie focused. Still, there are some real gems in the mix too. Peggle is an absolute blast as a hand-held game. The DS has couple very good Chess games. I do like the Wario game, though no other game makes me as conscious that I'm totally wasting time as this one. Puzzle Quest and its new child Puzzle Kingdoms are good. CoD: Modern War and WaW both are good on the DS. Dark Spire is a totally old school Wizardry clone dungeon crawl. Angband sort of works, though its still more of a novelty. I tried the unholy Pokemon Dungeon (aka Angband rethemed with Pokemon). Whoever did created this abomination needs to suffer greatly. Currently I'm giving FFIV and Chronotrigger, two of the highest rated RPGs of all time, a try, but I'm not quite a JRPGer, I'm afraid. Anyone else killing time this way?
So, the countdown to the hi-def, XBL-enabled re-release of MvC2 on 06/29/2009 is officially underway. For those among the uninitiated, the attached video provides a good taste of the insanity. My favorite is the Iron Man Ion Cannon power move. Anyway, enjoy, or at least please excuse the interruption to our regularly scheduled programming.
Labels: ramblings
posted by Ben @ 9:23 AM
6 comments
6 Comments:
At some point about 5-6 years ago, I transitioned from the "Oh, this game will take me three weeks to complete? That's great!" to the "Bah, I don't have three weeks to finish a game. I want a game that finishes in 30-45 minutes. And get those kids off my lawn!"
Basically, I'm getting older, and my attention span is getting shorter. That's why I like the shorter games these days. The longer games just feel like time sinks, and that's started to bug me more as I get older. Still, I can't quite bring myself to throw out all of those old great games I have in my garage. One of these days, I'll fire up Icewind Dale, or play again through one of the Monkey Island games or System Shock or Grim Fandango or Morrowind or something. (Right after I finish Mass Effect and Fallout 3 and GTA:Lost and the Damned and...)
Of course, I've been meaning to buy more furniture for my house for three years, and you all know how that's turned out so far.
I'm enjoying UFC but the load times in career mode are killer. The autosave "feature" that you can't turn off activates after every fight, camp or sparring session which is the majority of the ~350 weeks you spend in it.
I've gotten much better though. The ground game is much more complex than I thought it was.
Oh, Firaxis released a patch for Civ IV BTS today that fixes some minor bugs and also allows you to play without a cd.
Thanks for the heads up on BTS. I wonder if the patch will break FFH2 temporarily.
Yeah.... Mass Effect. I really need to finish that some day. At least with me, if I push through and finish an RPG (a good one), its normally an experience that sticks with me for a long time. I remember playing the SSI Gold Box AD&D games back in the day on my PC with a 386 processor (anyone else?), and completing some of those is still quite memorable. With no automap function I literally sketched out the dungeon maps on graph paper as I proceeded. Where was SABG then? Mostly in diapers perhaps.
I played some of those AD&D games but even back then Civilization was my drug of choice.
It is very probable that FFH will be temporarily broken by the patch.
I was hooked to Cures of the Azure bonds (AD&D Gold Box). What a great game... but I don't recall finishing it.
I'm just waiting for Starcraft and Diablo 3. In the meantime, I'm trying to play the Falout 3 expansions, and waiting for the latest patch to Empire:Total War.
sp issues.... that was Curse of the Azure bonds
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