Monthly Archives: May 2009

May 12 2009
Uncategorized

City of Heroes: Going Rogue

I’ve been playing City of Heroes, fairly regularly for five years now.

What keeps me coming back?

I think part of it has to do with the setting.  Superpowers in a modern day city.  Hero or Villain, you can choose either side.  Its comic book sensibilities appeal to me in many ways.  There is an insane amount of customization, so I can get characters to look the way I want.  A space for you to write the character’s biography in game that other people can read.

Then there’s the fact that I can play the game and not be bored.  The combat, while simple, is just fun to play.

I guess another aspect that keeps me coming back is that I’m often entertained by the other players, as opposed to fed up with them.  Every now and again, I’ll meet another Hero or Villain with a real background to them.  I’ll look at their carefully constructed character bio and they act in game accordingly.

And now they’ve announced the second full expansion to the game, Going Rogue.  Now characters have an alignment system and can fall somewhere between Hero and Villain.  Additionally, in true comic book style, they reveal a mirror universe as an entirely different game world.

Looks like there are a few more years in the City of Heroes for me.

May 11 2009
Games

Killzone 2: Multiplayer

I didn’t really get into Killzone 2’s multiplayer until recently.

As befitting a game titled “Killzone 2” you are invariably and unregrettably placed into a zone where you are then encouraged to kill people.  It’s true, the title hides no secrets.  One can also deduce that it’s a sequel, if you scour the text carefully.

As a sequel, the game is definitely in that rare category where it excels in every way from its predecessor.  It is a remarkably polished title.  Even the loading screens are innovative, using the sixaxis controls to just barely tilt the image, so that you can see that it is a three dimensional diorama.  Killzone 2 has jumped a console generation in its journey.  It benefits from both better hardware and better design choices.

Visually, I was most impressed by the little details.  Other players would kick up dust as they run in some of the desert levels.  If there were enough people, I could not see through it until the wind blew it away or I waited for a moment for it to settle.  You can shoot nearly everything and see some form of damage on it.

Multiplayer matches are 32 player, well, let’s see.  You’re placing 32 people into a confined area, dividing them into teams and giving them firearms.  I think you can see how this pans out.  Initially,  this many players sounds overwhelming, but very quickly, I saw that they had designed the game with this in mind.

The way that Killzone 2 handles these large groups is with squads.  Joining a squad provides many benefits.  The most primary of which is the capability of spawning on top of the squad leader.  If you’re working with a decent squad leader, that person will generally wait for their squad and move as a unit to perform their objectives.  If they run into unexpected resistance they’ll try to stay alive as long as possible and wait for the squad members to spawn back in.  Additionally, squads get their own channel, at least on the radar, my squad members were clearly marked so I knew where they were.

Overall, it’s a fun distraction from the single player portion of the game, which I have simply walked away from.  I really disliked one of the characters and I really just lost interest since he was there for so long.

But at least the multiplayer is good, for now.  Unlocking additional classes and abilities will probably keep me coming back, at least for the next couple of weeks or so on the weekends.

May 10 2009
Uncategorized

Mother's Day

Happy Mother’s Day!

Really there’s not much to say to all of the mothers, expectant mothers, mothers of mothers and everyone else that falls into this category other than people really should be treating them better every day.

I know that we all grow up and leave the nest, but we don’t need to regress into our former roles as child and parent.  Maybe we can, through dialogue and our actions show that we are coming int0 our own.  We are, in fact becoming equals in our society and should be treated accordingly.

That is, if our mothers let us.

May 09 2009
Technology

The Hunger

It builds.  Slowly.  Like a wave miles from shore, barely perceptible.  Easy to miss.

Then, building in intensity, it results in a flurry of activity, an unstoppable force focused on one thing:

Building a new computer.

I don’t know why, considering there are about three of them in the house right now.  I suppose I could get away with just rebuilding one of them, updating the internal components into something a little faster, with a little more RAM, a lot more hard drive space, possibly one of those quad cores.

I think I look at it as a research project, mainly out of wanting to keep up with technology, but also to see how far I can stretch the dollar.  Right now I’m thinking something small that fits properly in my entertainment center that can actually be a media center.  It’ll be different than the three other rigs I’ve built, but that’s a good thing, as I seem to have fallen into a rut with the piano black Sonata Antec cases.

I think part of this is really just getting fed up with not being able to find a suitable HDTV Tuner slash DVR combination.  Market forces have not provided me with a satisfactory solution, so I guess I’ll just have to roll my own.

May 08 2009
Games

Rune Factory Frontier is not Casablanca

Rune Factory Frontier is something else.  I’ve already logged over 20 hours.  To put that into a little more perspective, that’s longer than most games from start to finish.  To make that wide angle, let me put it this way:  I think I beat the first dungeon, but I’m not sure.  I didn’t consult the internet to make sure, but there was certainly a “Boss encounter” with a life bar and everything.  And it was pretty exciting, albeit straightforward.

I was not ready for it, but to be fair, the game did ask if I was ready for it.  Being overconfident, I went ahead anyway.  I came out on top but the life meter was flashing red.  Furiously.  There may have been a pixel of green in there somewhere, but I’m surprised that my character didn’t just wake up in the hospital with Sister Lara tending to his wounds.

It’s very open ended, so I’m not sure I’m doing it the right order.  Not that there is a “right” order.  I’m convinced I could spend the rest of Laguna’s life being a farmer.  Planting turnips in the Spring, and then growing grass for fodder for the buffamoos and the indentured servants befriended monsters that work the farm.  Maybe working enough nerve to ask Rosetta to marry him.  Spending summers on the beach, playing lazy beach games with the townsfolk.

But let me start with a summary.  Rune Factory Frontier is a game about farming.  And about dungeon crawling.  And dating.  And time management.  And monster raising. Continue reading →

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