01-24-2004, 12:38 AM
So I wake up this morning all frazzled (due to staying up late to catch Cowboy Bebop and Family Guy), expecting to just zone out today and enjoy a free Friday, when out of the blue I get a phone call (a call for me is generally an occasion of note).
No sooner have I placed the receiver to my ear than I hear my mother saying "happy birthday!" I was dumbstruck; is it that time of year again? Jeeze. So we talk a bit, since I haven't actually seen my mother for going on three years now; normal stuff - how I'm doing, how she's doing, then about my youngest sister, who's expecting her first child (and my second nephew!) some time in April (man, I just cannot wrap my head around being an uncle...). Mom says she wants to fly me down sometime maybe in May or June, to meet the two lil' tykes that will look to me for a cool role model who can spoil them and then drop 'em back into their parents' laps (B)), and to maybe spend some actual quality time with her and my sisters, and the family down there. Sounds great to me, but I don't have the cash for plane tickets, and I'm not sure that she can afford it right now either. But she insists, and I do want to visit...
Anyway, after all that I get called downstairs by my grandfather, who sounds excited over something. When I get there he's cutting a check, so I assume he wants me to run somewhere for him. Nope, the check's for me - but he asks me to stop by the grocery store while I'm out cashing it.
Then, when I get home (trying to keep each topic in section, so not doing this post chonologically) there's an Airborne Express parcel on the stoop, addressed to me (getting mail is like having the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade for me). Inside is yet another check, this time from my father, along with some "witty" poetry (I'll spare his honor by not posting it here :P ).
So yeah, I'm 24 now. And I feel the same as I did when I was 23. Yay, go me.
Section 2: Beyond Good & Evil
While I was out today (before buying groceries ;) ) I ran out to Wal-Mart (not exactly a bastion of the gaming field, but the only option other than an hour-long round trip to the EB ensconced in the Parkersburg mall) to pick up BG&E for the budget price of $19.96. While I was there I spotted Soldiers of Anarchy for $3.75, and thought "what the heck?" so my purchases ended up totalling roughly $25.
(Soldiers of Anarchy <LOL reminds me of primo EQ guild name fodder> is a post-apocalyptic semi-RTS. I say 'semi' because it doesn't seem to include base-building or throwing units at battle; from what I've read of the manual you end up with certain soldiers who have individual talents, and if they're killed you don't get replacements. I went ahead and impulse-bought it because the setting intrigues me <Scavenge the weapons of war and try to cobble together some semblance of civilisation after the bomb? Heck yeah> and no matter how bad it may be, I'm only less $4 - I haven't installed it yet, so I don't know if I'm actually out that $4 or not yet)
Once I was home and had put up the groceries, priority #1 was getting BG&E installed. My first huddle came when I didn't have enough free space to install it! BG&E come on 3 CDs and requires 2.2gb of space, and I had only 1.99gb free. With some quick housecleaning (back up and zipped my HALO saves, uninstalled the game) and reboot, I was back in action. Then I got to wait for about 40 minutes while the game installed (I'm guessing some pretty tight compression on the discs? Dunno why it would take so long otherwise).
Then, I pack the CDs away and try to run the game. Of course, installing 2.2gb of game files on my system isn't enough - I have to have the game disc in the drive to run it. And not only that, but Disk 3 - How fun it is to swap discs twice! Blargh. Then, every time you start up the game, you have to choose your language. You can't set it in some setup file or .ini file, you have to do it every time you play. Also, the menu navigation is strange. You navigate with W and S (up/down) and make selections with the left mouse button. What ever happened to the Enter key? Heck, Idunno.
Once you actually start playing, though, you'll forget all about those nuisances. The game is GORGEOUS, and even my machine could run it at the default settings fine (it's even better with the patch). You get thrown immediately into the action - there's no slow buildup here, and it works great. In fact, when you first gain control of Jade (in a tutorial-type battle, no less) the enemies had time to close on me before I realised that yes, I should indeed be playing now. B)
BG&E really does play like Zelda, too. No, that's not right. It's not just a game mechanics thing; this game has that "feel" - where you can just tell that everything fits together neatly, that you're playing a classic. It really is that good.
The photography bit works extremely well, too - when I first heard about it I wondered, I'll admit. I'm not exactl a fan of Pokemon, which is what it sounded like (in fact, wasn't there a Pokemon Snap! game where you had to photograph Pokemon or something?), but it's implemented really well. You don't find weird creatures hopping out from behind hills so you can OMG snap that cool random thing!. Instead you'll be walking along and see a bug buzz by, or a fish break the surface of the water for a second (gawd, talk about awesome water!), so you pull out your camera and take a snapshot. You can even take additional photos that get put in a photo album you can look at anytime you like. ;)
After playing for about 30 minutes and finishing the little in-game tutorial, the game crashed out while transitioning. Since I was already down to my desktop, I figured I should maybe check and see if there was a patch available? Duh, there it was, 5mb large, and fixed my crash problem. I got a no-CD crack while I was at it, too. I gave that game 11% of my HD space, I'll be damned if I'm going to fiddle with CD-swapping.
Then I sat back down and played 2 more straight hours of it. This game so rocks.
Section 31: Silent Storm
(Sorry, lame DS9 joke. I couldn't resist)
Part of the reason I was up so late last night is simple: I had just finished downloading the SS demo and simply could not put it down.
Silent Storm is a WWII game in which you assemble a crack team of up to 6 insurgence agents (including your own character, with a customizable head/face) and do sneaky things for the Axis or Allies in 24 missions (and supposedly unlimited random missions) per campaign.
Doesn't sound all that special yet, right? After all, we already have the Commandos games. But what if I were to tell you that SS was turn-based? And I don't mean TB like Fallout Tactics, I mean TB like X-COM and Jagged Alliance. About the only thing that keeps this game from being "X-COM, but better" is the lack of a 'reserve fire' option (man, I totally abused that in X-COM. Knowing that you'll always have enough AP for a snapshot in reserve is a big morale booster).
There's even the bare-bones of an RPG system in there. Each soldier (there are 20 for each campaign, along with your PC) has one of six classes: Soldier, Scout, Sniper, Grenadier, Engineer, or Medic. They can all use each skill, but Medics start with a higher Medicine skill and can raise it faster, and so on. Also, when your soldiers level up they can choose from Fallout-style perks, but they're in a DII-style skill tree. There's easily 40+ perks for each class, so that should help individualize soldiers.
Now, as if that wasn't cool enough, let's up the ante. Fully deformable terrain. You can destroy/demolish anything in this game. Example:
- In the Allied demo mission, I sent the Medic skulking into a run-down building (to let him flank since he wasn't exactly Rambo, and to use it as a fallback position to heal troopers at). Most of the rest of my soldiers were pinned down by the opposition either in the middle of a street (the Soldier and Sniper were doing their best to use streetlamps as cover...) or just outside the row of buildings. Suddenly, out of the blue a Nazi trooper on the second floor of the building the Medic was in poked his head out of a window and sprayed my Engineer with MG fire. Over the course of a few rounds, I had my Medic fire up through the floor at the trooper. The Medic wasn't exactly a good shot, and only managed to wing the guy, but he did do enough damage to the floor to destroy a section of it. Now I'm in trouble; I have a Medic with a bolt-action rifle staring through a hole in the floor at a Nazi trooper with a machine gun. Desperate, I turn my Engineer away from the troops in the street that he had been trading shots with, and directed a full-auto burst at the windowsill I knew was protecting the MG Nazi. My shots chewed through the windowsill, destroyed a section of wall, and killed the Nazi, who then fell backwards (thanks to the ragdoll physics engine) through the hole in the floor and landed at the Medic's feet.
You can pick up your jaw now. B)
Well. I know what my next game purchase will be...
No sooner have I placed the receiver to my ear than I hear my mother saying "happy birthday!" I was dumbstruck; is it that time of year again? Jeeze. So we talk a bit, since I haven't actually seen my mother for going on three years now; normal stuff - how I'm doing, how she's doing, then about my youngest sister, who's expecting her first child (and my second nephew!) some time in April (man, I just cannot wrap my head around being an uncle...). Mom says she wants to fly me down sometime maybe in May or June, to meet the two lil' tykes that will look to me for a cool role model who can spoil them and then drop 'em back into their parents' laps (B)), and to maybe spend some actual quality time with her and my sisters, and the family down there. Sounds great to me, but I don't have the cash for plane tickets, and I'm not sure that she can afford it right now either. But she insists, and I do want to visit...
Anyway, after all that I get called downstairs by my grandfather, who sounds excited over something. When I get there he's cutting a check, so I assume he wants me to run somewhere for him. Nope, the check's for me - but he asks me to stop by the grocery store while I'm out cashing it.
Then, when I get home (trying to keep each topic in section, so not doing this post chonologically) there's an Airborne Express parcel on the stoop, addressed to me (getting mail is like having the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade for me). Inside is yet another check, this time from my father, along with some "witty" poetry (I'll spare his honor by not posting it here :P ).
So yeah, I'm 24 now. And I feel the same as I did when I was 23. Yay, go me.
Section 2: Beyond Good & Evil
While I was out today (before buying groceries ;) ) I ran out to Wal-Mart (not exactly a bastion of the gaming field, but the only option other than an hour-long round trip to the EB ensconced in the Parkersburg mall) to pick up BG&E for the budget price of $19.96. While I was there I spotted Soldiers of Anarchy for $3.75, and thought "what the heck?" so my purchases ended up totalling roughly $25.
(Soldiers of Anarchy <LOL reminds me of primo EQ guild name fodder> is a post-apocalyptic semi-RTS. I say 'semi' because it doesn't seem to include base-building or throwing units at battle; from what I've read of the manual you end up with certain soldiers who have individual talents, and if they're killed you don't get replacements. I went ahead and impulse-bought it because the setting intrigues me <Scavenge the weapons of war and try to cobble together some semblance of civilisation after the bomb? Heck yeah> and no matter how bad it may be, I'm only less $4 - I haven't installed it yet, so I don't know if I'm actually out that $4 or not yet)
Once I was home and had put up the groceries, priority #1 was getting BG&E installed. My first huddle came when I didn't have enough free space to install it! BG&E come on 3 CDs and requires 2.2gb of space, and I had only 1.99gb free. With some quick housecleaning (back up and zipped my HALO saves, uninstalled the game) and reboot, I was back in action. Then I got to wait for about 40 minutes while the game installed (I'm guessing some pretty tight compression on the discs? Dunno why it would take so long otherwise).
Then, I pack the CDs away and try to run the game. Of course, installing 2.2gb of game files on my system isn't enough - I have to have the game disc in the drive to run it. And not only that, but Disk 3 - How fun it is to swap discs twice! Blargh. Then, every time you start up the game, you have to choose your language. You can't set it in some setup file or .ini file, you have to do it every time you play. Also, the menu navigation is strange. You navigate with W and S (up/down) and make selections with the left mouse button. What ever happened to the Enter key? Heck, Idunno.
Once you actually start playing, though, you'll forget all about those nuisances. The game is GORGEOUS, and even my machine could run it at the default settings fine (it's even better with the patch). You get thrown immediately into the action - there's no slow buildup here, and it works great. In fact, when you first gain control of Jade (in a tutorial-type battle, no less) the enemies had time to close on me before I realised that yes, I should indeed be playing now. B)
BG&E really does play like Zelda, too. No, that's not right. It's not just a game mechanics thing; this game has that "feel" - where you can just tell that everything fits together neatly, that you're playing a classic. It really is that good.
The photography bit works extremely well, too - when I first heard about it I wondered, I'll admit. I'm not exactl a fan of Pokemon, which is what it sounded like (in fact, wasn't there a Pokemon Snap! game where you had to photograph Pokemon or something?), but it's implemented really well. You don't find weird creatures hopping out from behind hills so you can OMG snap that cool random thing!. Instead you'll be walking along and see a bug buzz by, or a fish break the surface of the water for a second (gawd, talk about awesome water!), so you pull out your camera and take a snapshot. You can even take additional photos that get put in a photo album you can look at anytime you like. ;)
After playing for about 30 minutes and finishing the little in-game tutorial, the game crashed out while transitioning. Since I was already down to my desktop, I figured I should maybe check and see if there was a patch available? Duh, there it was, 5mb large, and fixed my crash problem. I got a no-CD crack while I was at it, too. I gave that game 11% of my HD space, I'll be damned if I'm going to fiddle with CD-swapping.
Then I sat back down and played 2 more straight hours of it. This game so rocks.
Section 31: Silent Storm
(Sorry, lame DS9 joke. I couldn't resist)
Part of the reason I was up so late last night is simple: I had just finished downloading the SS demo and simply could not put it down.
Silent Storm is a WWII game in which you assemble a crack team of up to 6 insurgence agents (including your own character, with a customizable head/face) and do sneaky things for the Axis or Allies in 24 missions (and supposedly unlimited random missions) per campaign.
Doesn't sound all that special yet, right? After all, we already have the Commandos games. But what if I were to tell you that SS was turn-based? And I don't mean TB like Fallout Tactics, I mean TB like X-COM and Jagged Alliance. About the only thing that keeps this game from being "X-COM, but better" is the lack of a 'reserve fire' option (man, I totally abused that in X-COM. Knowing that you'll always have enough AP for a snapshot in reserve is a big morale booster).
There's even the bare-bones of an RPG system in there. Each soldier (there are 20 for each campaign, along with your PC) has one of six classes: Soldier, Scout, Sniper, Grenadier, Engineer, or Medic. They can all use each skill, but Medics start with a higher Medicine skill and can raise it faster, and so on. Also, when your soldiers level up they can choose from Fallout-style perks, but they're in a DII-style skill tree. There's easily 40+ perks for each class, so that should help individualize soldiers.
Now, as if that wasn't cool enough, let's up the ante. Fully deformable terrain. You can destroy/demolish anything in this game. Example:
- In the Allied demo mission, I sent the Medic skulking into a run-down building (to let him flank since he wasn't exactly Rambo, and to use it as a fallback position to heal troopers at). Most of the rest of my soldiers were pinned down by the opposition either in the middle of a street (the Soldier and Sniper were doing their best to use streetlamps as cover...) or just outside the row of buildings. Suddenly, out of the blue a Nazi trooper on the second floor of the building the Medic was in poked his head out of a window and sprayed my Engineer with MG fire. Over the course of a few rounds, I had my Medic fire up through the floor at the trooper. The Medic wasn't exactly a good shot, and only managed to wing the guy, but he did do enough damage to the floor to destroy a section of it. Now I'm in trouble; I have a Medic with a bolt-action rifle staring through a hole in the floor at a Nazi trooper with a machine gun. Desperate, I turn my Engineer away from the troops in the street that he had been trading shots with, and directed a full-auto burst at the windowsill I knew was protecting the MG Nazi. My shots chewed through the windowsill, destroyed a section of wall, and killed the Nazi, who then fell backwards (thanks to the ragdoll physics engine) through the hole in the floor and landed at the Medic's feet.
You can pick up your jaw now. B)
Well. I know what my next game purchase will be...
![[Image: 9426697EGZMV.png]](http://sigs.guildlaunch.net/wsig.php/9426697EGZMV.png)