I could write about so many wonderful games I have to play and work on. Instead, all I can think about is Cakemania. I started playing this because I like baking and a friend suggested it. It’s pretty addictive. More so, you can pick it up in small pieces. Cakemania is a time management game where you have a cook, several stations, and customers that arrive with different orders. The game switches it up with different types of cake styles and different customer needs. Example, a vampire might show up and drain the life from customers if you don’t serve him fast. There are three Cakemania games. I’ve only played Cakemania and Cakemania 3, because for some reason Cakemania 2 did not want to play on my computer. Cakemania has a very small story line about trying to work a cake making business from the ground up. I admit I only got to the Beach before I was quickly overwhelmed and my hands hurt from running here and there. Cakemania 3 has a more detailed (if not really over the top) story line to it. They have really fine tuned the movement in Cakemania 3 the best, but, Cakemania the first is a good place to start if you have never checked them out. Now all they need is Cupcakemania and I would be very happy.
My mother was visiting for a week, so, before that we had to clean like our lives depended on it. As such, I didn’t get much else done and had very little energy for other things. My mother, up until this week, had never played a video game. I talked her into trying the Wii Sports game and bowling. She didn’t do too bad! At first, I was nervous that the controls would be a little too much for someone who has never used a controller. However, bowling really uses A and B and you swing it. It’s that safe. So, we delved into it. Eventually, my mother was moving herself around back and forth using the arrows and got strikes and spares! It was a really good time and a good test of just how easy and compelling a system like the Wii can be for someone who isn’t a big fan of video games.
Day two of Bioshock occurred last night. I am now way farther than I ever got in the game when I attempted to play the first time. At first, it left me timid and I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to play after my husband went to bed. Last night, I started to ease into the atmosphere and relish the surprises around the corner. It is not that the noises (or lack of noise) gets repetitive, just that, you begin to enjoy the story and atmosphere that it brings. After the cut, I included where I was in the game. It’s put there for people who don’t want spoilers.
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This evening I loaded up Bioshock to play it. I did play it for a short time in the past, but at the time, I wasn’t used to gaming in the same way and I had never even owned a gaming mouse. I started it up today and it worked really well on my computer. More so, I got to the Medical Pavilion tonight. It may have taken me a long time to get there. There’s so much to explore and look at in the game that I want to poke around and look at all the stuff in the city. More so, Bioshock, like System Shock, always seems to be a game where you can go about it a few different ways.
I know I’m late to the band wagon, but, I’m always late to the band wagon. I was honestly surprised at how successful I could be at the game. What gets me is that there’s always some whisper around the corner or some startling surprise in a perfectly empty room. Like System Shock, many of the horrors are simply atmosphere over actual monsters. It has a very nice psychological element to it that I found very appealing.
This weekend I got Lego: Harry Potter. This Lego game covers years 1-4. I have to admit that I was a little nervous following Lego: Indiana Jones. Indiana Jones just didn’t seem as remarkable as Lego Star Wars did or even Lego: Batman. If you think a Lego game can’t hook you, try Lego: Harry Potter. First, there is so much going on that you can literally spend hours in an area finding everything. It’s a nice mix of a family game and a difficult collection game that will have more advanced gamers spending lots of time trying to do everything, see everything, and more of all collect everything. All the charm of the Harry Potter movies was put into this game. The scenes are very familiar and the areas you play are easy to recognize as moments from the movie.
New to Lego: Harry Potter is the ability to learn magic spells in lessons, just like they would in a school. Because characters start with limited abilities and learn them as they move through the years of school, it’s easy to figure out what spells to use for various obstacles in the game. I expected this game to be decent, like all Lego games, but they really outdid themselves in this one. Everything is as near perfect as a Lego can get to representing the Harry Potter books/movies. I’m not yet done with Year 4 and I have over half a game to go even when I just finish the storyline. This is an excellent choice for playability and for having plenty to do for the money.
On Friday night, I played Spore. I never played Spore when it originally came out so I’m a little late in the game. I can see why some people did not enjoy it or lost interest. Having seen some of my other posts, you can imagine that creating adorable creatures and having them dance to make friends could keep me busy for hours. It really did. I was up until 2 am playing with cute and adorable creatures. That was Friday night.
Some nights, though, I can’t seem to pick one thing to concentrate on. Tonight was not the worst night, but, it wasn’t great. I have also been playing Final Fantasy XIII. I’ve probably played it a total of four hours with 2 of those hours coming from tonight’s play time. Sitting for 2 hours and doing something is a pretty big thing for me. There are people who don’t like Final Fantasy XIII, and maybe, I’ll get annoyed in another 2-3 plays. For now, though, I’m generally enjoying the story line even if I secretly hope some characters fall off a crystal to their end.
I can’t hate too much as it helped me get my 5,000th achievement point on the Xbox. That was pretty cool.
I was blogging every day and I fell out of this. This is because I have been really busy with so many things. This is going to be longish, sorry. I’m really not sorry. But, for a moment, you thought I was.
FiranMUX
I have been busy on FiranMUX because I am so close to finishing out some top priority projects and be ready to select new projects. One of my projects is a SQL project, so, I’ve been learning a bit more about using mySQL. This takes a lot of thought processes and concentration for me. It is taking a long time to finish this project. When it’s done, though, I’ll have completed my first set of softcode combined with a SQL back end. Sometimes, I don’t do my best work in front of a computer screen. This explains the mounds of composition notebooks I own filled with mysterious notes related to gaming and life. I’m hoping to get away a little bit and turn on my music and just finish up some projects.
Vampire
I GM’d my first Vampire game the Saturday before last. For a long time, I promised that I would run Vampire: The Masquerade and I finally made it happen. That was my first face to face tabletop GMing. At first, I was ridiculously nervous. Over time, I became less so. I’m no World of Darkness expert, by any means. I felt like I needed to create more history/opportunities within my GMing. I needed to have more investigation type stuff go on and more NPC to PC conflicts available. I really need to see their Storyteller’s guide and get some more guidance on what Vampire players expect. Since the bulk of my GMing experience is text-based, it’s a whole different world. The players enjoyed themselves, despite, my inexperience. They did note that they expected me to get a GM screen and roll more. This was confounding to me. Apparently, this adds to the mystery. I can do this!
AstralMUX
AstralMUX is on a small hiatus because a few players are on vacation. This means I have plenty of time to get my notes together so I can GM the next part of our adventure. I’m looking to examine The Burning Wheel as my method of resolution on that game. I’m working on getting a set of books to look at to confirm whether it will fit or not. We do a lot of conflicted related GMing where you only have a chance to fail if it’s really hard. This seems to fit The Burning Wheel, so, that’s one more thing I have to examine at some point. Really, I’ve been updating the wiki here and there, which, is a huge project.
D&D
I ran my first D&D campaign for fourth edition (4E) on Sunday. I had participated in one previous 4th edition campaign, so, I was semi-familiar with the mechanics. We are testing out the Scales of War campaign from D&D Insider. This is a pre-written adventure meant to take players from levels 1-30. In about four hours and with slightly rusty skills, we got through about ten pages of the adventure and nearly halfway to level 2. Things went smoothly, even though I’m still learning. I felt like it was enjoyable and everyone found some sort of role within the group. One of the things I discovered is a healer-centric character is fun to have on board. You feel more comfortable, obligated even, to let players dip down in hit points and let them have those big saves.
I have done more stuff, but, I’m tired. I’ll write more LATER.
I wanted to write a big long post about why I had not wrote in a while and the neat gaming I have been up to. Today is too busy, though. Instead, I’ll leave you with this thought after I read Rage of Angels:
Books have taught me that having an affair with a senator, breaking up, having his baby, and having an affair with a crime boss is a terrible idea.
Thank goodness! I might have accidentally done this. It’s wrought with difficulty!
Before I talk about the game let me say, I cannot pronounce Red Dead Redemption. For some reason, I hid the Dead part and I just start going ded ded ded ded. I don’t know why. I tried out the Single Player mod of Red Dead and it was very intriguing. I finished just the first little section that teaches you how to walk around and use a horse. The graphics are beautiful and the game play is similar to many other games which are activity based versus a First Person Shooter. My husband complained that the controls were not what he is used to. He likes to play a lot of First Person Shooters. Red Dead has a neat aiming mechanism and I like how it concentrates more on an overall experience rather than just creating walls based on skill.
I tried out the multiplayer on a private server. This added a whole new dimension in the game. You can level up using the multiplayer scenario by completing challenges. They start out with things like hunting, like kill 5 wild birds. The challenges eventually begin ramping up into killing more difficult things and completing tasks like clearing out gang areas, etc.
The atmosphere of this game is amazing. It makes you feel like you are there and the area is lare enough that there is plenty to explore. One could spend hours just riding around aimlessly through prairies and cacti.
Yesterday, I made a tweet complaining about Lego: Indiana Jones. Before I get into why, I should explain that I really love the lego game franchise. They are essentially the same formula and it works. You get to break everything, collect things, and each character type always has a unique and fun role. I played Lego: Star Wars and Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga. I’ve beat nearly all of The Complete Saga with exception of the canisters in the Death Star. In Lego Star Wars the Complete Saga, at its hardest, most things felt possible. This is why I worry about the QA on Lego: Indiana Jones as I found two major frustrating situations last night:
- In the Well of Souls, there is a secret area with spinning pillars where you have to jump from rung to rung. It’s a near impossible puzzle. I use the term puzzle loosely because it’s not so much puzzling about how to solve it, but, it does require you to stand around and jump over and over again hoping to time it correctly. I looked online and the forums everywhere essentially stated you just had to keep jumping until you made it. Really? Is that what you want to do in a Lego game? Keep jumping until you make it? The barrier to game completion is jumping for hours until you get lucky. I just think they should have rechecked that game design and considered how that would really feel.
- In Chasing the Ark, there’s a puzzle where you pull a level, it raises stairs, and you have to carry a parcel up them. Unfortunately, these very short stairs were created such that if you get to close to the stair, you can’t jump up it. You have to essentially make it up the stairs by jumping not too close to the next stair. This isn’t immediately obvious. After all, Lego games are not precision games. It’s not like you ever get a physics based system here. They are Legos. So, the sudden switch to yet another precise mechanic seems to be contrary to the spirit of the game.
Ultimately, I do love the game and the style. But, I worry that the developers didn’t play their own game or they didn’t have someone outside of them play it and note some of these rather difficult situations. It just felt like they brought the game out a little rough, maybe they were on a deadline. Maybe, they improved in Lego Indiana Jones 2. They did the same thing between Lego: SW and The Complete Saga.
