Holiday Weekly

Being home for the holidays has kept me offline for much of the week. I've been able to hang out with the old high school gang, which is always a good time. We did a one shot d20 modern game that involved fun stuff like 2-rounding a dragon. Epic.

Getting a dose of the tabletop stuff got me fired up to get some gaming going with the new year. I want to try out 4th edition, so I've started building the world for the game. World building has to be one of my favorite parts of DMing. Instead of starting from scratch, I'm revising the world I ran in college to hopefully stand up to the new rules and another long campaign.

On the electronic side of gaming, I've been pathetically attempting to dual box my hordies in WoW. Even after coercing my mom's mac mini into running wrath, that little GMA950 in there isn't too keen on running it well. Besides, I only have one multi-button mouse in the whole house. Command clicking is not an easy way to play that game.

I get back home (as in Cali) early next week. I'll be looking forward to starting the new Prince of Persia, along with putting some time into Tabula Rasa. I'm ready to have a full week of downtime before work picks back up on the 4th.

Happy holidays!

A Weekly Thing

Taking a cue from other blogs I frequent, I'm adding a bit of structure to my blog. Hopefully, this will get me writing more regularly. But, I've fooled myself before...

Anyway... The plan for Fridays is a quick weekly review of bits I found interesting and maybe a preview for what I'm playing (or otherwise doing) over the weekend. Yes, more crap about games. It's what I do.

I finally finished Fallout 3. Well, I finished the main story and a decent chunk of the side quests. I went through as the good guy, so I'll have to play it the other way at some point. I'll record my thoughts later, but the short version is simply: that game rocked.

The Runes of Magic open beta started this week, which has been a pleasant diversion for the last couple of days. I'll have more to say later, but it was quite surprising.

Spore finally got on Steam! A bunch of other EA titles went online as part of the deal. As a huge supporter of Steam this is an awesome development. It definitely lessens the DRM issues in the public eye somewhat, even though Steam itself is a effective bit of DRM. Oh well... a topic for another time perhaps.

The soon to close Tabula Rasa went free to play a month early. This is great news since I wanted to pick it back up to get further in the game before it goes away completely. If you haven't given it a shot yet, I strongly reccomend it. TR does some interesting things both in the MMO and scifi spaces.

I'm heading home for the holidays this weekend, which sadly leaves me without console or windows for over a week. Thus, my gameplay will be limited to WoW and Starcraft during the holiday. Although, I'll probably have a d20 something session with friends. Good times!

Best Question of All Time

Last week an email went around the office that stirred up quite a bit of conversation. The propmt was simply: "What is the best game of all time?"

On the surface it seems simple, but that question is amazingly loaded. Even after tallying the studio results, not many people agreed with one another... I think the most popular title had a mere 4 votes. The reason this question becomes so incredibly difficult to answer seems to be because there are so many axes by which to judge a game: innovation, execution, narrative, mechanics, popularity, longevity, etc. The fact is no two people can agree on how these should be weighted when judging a game. I think that's why we saw so many good answers to the question.

Many people went to personal favorites, because one's favorite surely must have some reason for being so. Some went to those games with mass market appeal with the logic that the most widely played games must be doing something right (Tetris). Others looked at longevity, claiming that the better game will hold up regardless of age (Starcraft). Interestingly, very few games made recently (within the last 5 years) made an appearance on the list. I think this displays a clear nostalgia factor as there are certainly many top notch games from recent times.

For me, this question highlighted some of the quirks (putting it lightly) that we see in the review side of the game industry... and it certainly displays that no one can agree on the intricacies of what makes a good game. But maybe trying to boil it down to the simplicity of good and bad is a futile exercise in the first place.

Lively Bunch

Gamers have been swamped with good games competing for their money and time this fall. I've been playing a lot of stuff, but haven't gotten around to writing about any of it. So, time to start clearing the backlog.

I'll start with one of the F-sequels, Fallout 3. Well, not really... I'll save judgement for when I'm done with it (ps - it's awesome). What is worth mentioning is the Windows Live service on the PC version. It was really smart to link up the PC and 360 sections of its Live service. Even though it's a single player game, I can access friends and achievements and such just like I was playing on my 360. Well played, Microsoft.

Now if we could just further bridge the gap between platforms, so I don't have to join a new social network everytime I buy a console or game. We can dream, can't we?

Blast from the Past

My obsession with Starcraft progaming has started bleeding into my gameplay time. I found myself spending several hours last night enjoying the decade old game. It's astonishing how well it has held up through the years.

I've been revisiting the Zerg and Protoss campaigns since I neglected those races back in the day. I've had a lot of fun outside my Terran comfort zone, and I certainly appreciate the game more by exploring the entire experience. Maybe I'll have something more profound to say about it once I've gotten through more of it... I doubt it though.

Besides, I can't be rusty for SC2. I don't want to noob it up online.

Proof of Concept

More than anything, this post is to test out the post by email functionality of this blog. I've been waiting for a good way to blog by iPhone, but google still hasn't put out an app yet. Most blog apps seem to have issues with blogger, and the first one that claims full support (BlogPress) is a pricey $10. If this email thing works out, maybe I'll actually post more frequently.

Update: Looks like blog-by-email is a no go thanks to some weird formatting issues. Maybe trying that app will be worth it after all.