everburning

Owen has finally published some screenshots and copy for the game he’s been working on. If you’ve got an iPhone or iPod Touch you should head over and check out Dapple from Streaming Colour Studios.

You should also buy it when it comes out, else I’ll have to come find it. I know people who own big sticks….

(But then, the game stands on its own. Owen sent me a prototype that was a lot of fun to poke around. The new version looks like it’s miles ahead of what I played so I’m looking forward to the release.)

So, I’ve been playing Lost Odyssey on and off for a few weeks. The game is pretty good. There are technical glitches in it but nothing like Mass Effect where they just stopped me from playing.

But, and this is a big but, it breaks a few of the cardinal rules about RPG games. These make it quite hard to keep playing.

Rule #1
I shouldn’t have to watch an hour of cut scenes. Before you ask, a cut scene, then a 2 minute interlude where you play but you can only do specific actions that advance the cut scene into the next cut scene all qualifies as one big cut scene. I played for a hour and a half yesterday but I think I put in 20 minutes of actual play time.

Rule #2
Don’t put in stupid little mini quests that have no real benefit for the overall story but pad out the game length. Case in point, during that 20 minutes I played yesterday about 15 of that was doing two stupid little mini quests. The sad thing is, the quests were almost identical. Go pick 10 flowers, ok, now go pick up 10 pieces of wood. Ok, now stand and move your torch like these other guys 5 times.

Those are the two big rules that it’s broken so far. Interestingly, they aren’t the cause of my Lost Odyssey anger. No, that stems from me fighting the boss in the Crimson Forest. First time I get there the game crashes, disk read error. I hadn’t hit the save point yet so I redo the last 30 minutes. Second time I go in and fight the boss, it’s going well, I get to the half way point and setup my attacks then, after my attacks are set and I can’t stop them, it gives a crucial piece of information. My attacks proceed and Game Over. Ok, 3rd time I get there, just as I’m about to get to the crucial point the game glitches and zooms out forever. Apparently other people have had this same issue. Ok, 4th time I’m fighting the boss, just as I get to the crucial point the game throws up a Loading screen and sits there for (well, I gave it 20 minutes). At this point I threw in the towel and played Ridge Racer.

So, while I really, really want to like this game, it’s making it quite hard not to Frisbee the 4 disks off the balcony.

Been playing a few games lately. First up was Assassins Creed. I thought this game was fantastic. The graphics are amazing, the story is really good. A lot of reviews seem to complain that all the missions are all copies of one another, and I’ll admit they are fairly similar, but I didn’t even notice. It’s just too much fun to sneak up behind someone and stab them in the throat. This is the first game I’ve played straight through without injecting another game in the middle.

All in all, I’m very happy with the purchase.

Next up was Mass Effect. I borrowed this from Basil who said it was good. I’ve been playing for a few hours now and my god an I disappointed. The textures on the characters look like cheap knock offs compared to Gears. The loading scene goes away just to have more loading. The textures pop-in after loading. I’ve seen characters run their hands through their own bodies. The shadows move randomly all over the place. It feels like this game should have had another 6 months of development time to get it cleaned up. The story is interesting, but the tech behind it is missing the mark. (Whoever through radial menus was a good idea needs a beating.) I’m very glad I borrowed this instead of purchasing. Takes a bit of the sting out.

Oh, and the decision to have a Mission tab and an Assignment tab is silly. I spent about 3 hours doing the assignments as I thought they were the required missions for me to move on. Until I randomly got caught back into the main story that is. Very annoying.

I’ll play it through for the story but I feel the need to get Gears back from Basil to cleanse myself.

Stacy and I went with Adam and Mel to Playdium today. Played a bit of mini-golf (in which Stacy got her ass handed to her) some go karting, a bit of batting cages and some video games.

All in all, pretty fun.

I picked up, well, Stacy picked up for me, a copy of Blue Dragon for the Xbox 360. In a fit of rage for playing video games at Playdium by 360 decided to stick me with three nice flashing lights.

I’m now waiting for a box to arrive so I can ship the xbox to Microsoft to be repaired. Looks like I’m xbox less for 13-17 business days.

Suck.

I’m finally, finally, back in Warcraft again. After umpteen patches and too many hours to count I can play again. As is my usual habit when coming back after not playing I’ve created a new character on a new server.

This time I’m Dalrei, the Night Elf Hunter on Ravenholdt.

I’ve played with a new character on the same servers as my other characters but I ended up mailing my new character the money and bags and stuff from the old character. I then used the old as a kind of bank to do all the auction house work.

This feels kind of, icky, to me. There is something you lose in the game when you start out with a couple 12 slot bags. You lose that sweet, I just found a 6 slot bag feeling. That decision on what to buy since you have no money.

I must have 12-15 characters scattered over a half dozen servers by now.

Anyway, we’ll see if I decide to renew my account. It expires on Tuesday (I cancelled it last week).

Or, maybe Bioshock will actually work when I try to play it tomorrow.