Category: Games

Here’s a link to the list of changes in the Shores of Evendim patch for LotR Online:

Shores of Evendim: Patch Notes Part 1        

Follow the links in each part to see parts 2 and 3.

[Aside: Has anyone else seen a horde of ravenous, brain eating zombies go by?]

Pros:

• best CPU (“‘jou see doz folding@home stats!?”)
• BlueRay player
• backwards compatibility with my existing PS2 library
• excellent media center functionality (I didn’t even realize it had CF/SD/MS slots until I got it home. 🙂 )

Cons:

• too expensive
• BlueTooth remote, with no IR option
• not as many games as XBox360
• noisy (but not as noisy as the 360 — man those things howl!)

Of the Cons, the only one that really bugs me is the remote. It means that if you want to use this as your main media center, then you can’t use the same remote you use for everything else. Or at least, I can’t, since I’m hooked on my Harmony. Time will tell how much that pisses me off.

I “solved” the problem of it being too expensive by turning in my old PS2. They gave me $100 in trade for something I only paid $169 for — not bad. The rest was just the little bit of “mad money” I got for my year end bonus.

The noise problem I solved by mounting it in a small end unit that faces away from the viewing area. That’s one good thing about the BT remote: no need to point the front of the PS3 in the same direction as the TV. On a related note, since the controllers are all just USB devices, I could use one of the 10′ USB extension cables I had to reach to my favourite spot on the couch.

You can’t, of course, enclose the unit since it would cook itself. It definitely runs warm to the touch, even with lots of ventilation. Oh well.

As to the games, well I picked up Resistance:FoM, which seemed most like something I would play, given the available titles. It’s a good, if not particularly inspired, FPS. I’m having enough fun that I’ll probably continue to play it, which is all that counts. I must say that on the HDTV, the graphics are almost as good as I could get out of my PC, which given the box I run, is quite a compliment.

I also got Underworld:Evolution on BlueRay. I’m very pleased with the resulting image quality. I guess those of you who borrow from my video collection are going to have to start upgrading too; I’ll probably be buying BlueRay versions of anything new that comes out, from now on.

After travelling last week, I felt the need to just sit around and decompress on the weekend. To that end, I picked up Jade Empire Special Edition for the PC on Friday night. After about 25 hours of playing between Friday and Sunday night, I finished it, and I have to say it was a very satisfying experience.

The engine the game is built on is basically the same as the one used for the Star Wars: Knights of the old Republic games (also from BioWare), which many of you know I thoroughly enjoyed. The graphics for Jade Empire are, as you would expect, an improvement on the earlier games, but they’re not in the same class as Oblivion. You still get the feeling that the world is a series of path’s that you can follow, rather than a wide-open sandbox. Somehow though, this doesn’t detract from the experience.

What really makes these games work for me is the combination of epic story telling, deep meaningful characters, and a strong sense that your moral choices (and not just your speed on the gamepad or mouse buttons) actually effect the outcome of the story. I have always said that the first KotoR game was a better Star Wars movie than all of Episodes 1, 2 and 3. To me, Jade Empire is like a cross between a martial arts movie and Chinese opera where you get to play the action hero, the tragic anti-hero, or anything in between. Love, loss, triumph, sacrifice, humour, all there with you at the center.

A strong recommendation to any RPG gamer who wants to know just how good the stories told by games can be.

If you decide to play, let me know whether you follow the way of the open palm or the closed fist. I’m thinking of playing through it again (yes, right away) to see how some of the other choices would turned out.

Caveat: One thing to watch out for with Jade Empire is that it does require a certain non-trivial amount of manual dexterity. You can definitely feel the console roots of the game — it was originally an xbox360 title — both in the player reaction time requirements and in the inclusion of flying “mini games” that are (thankfully) skippable.

Well, Guild Oie Jedoonee has finally made the big time. We were mentioned in a commercial gaming print magazine called “Massive Magazine”. Here’s the quote (from Issue #2):

“It’s a fundamental rule in PvP that players are not equal,” says Ted Caldwell[sic], a software developer from Ottawa, Canada. Caldwell’s World of WarCraft guild, Oie Jedoonee, takes the high-level stuff so seriously that he’s got his wife leveling his characters for him when he’s too busy to grind it out himself. Playing at the highest levels, where it’s all about PvP, requires this kind of commitment. “Just a difference in level can be the difference between being wormfood and immortal,” he says.

Ted got seriously ribbed about whether or not we were actually a l33t PvP guild and whose guild it actually was. Although, I suspect we were mostly just jealous because we can’t get our wives to level our characters for us (hm… maybe Todd ;-)).

In Ted’s favour, he did claim that he was mis-quoted:

Fascinating. I’ve never been quoted out of context before; what a bizarre experience. 🙂

I never gave the impression that we were l33t (or serious). The question was one about differences in PvP between MMOs and shooters. The (full) answer was:

It’s a fundamental rule in MMO PvP that players are not equal. In a shooter, every player has the same basic abilities; they can jump the same height, shoot the same weapons, kill the opponents as quickly. In an MMO, that’s not the case. Even setting aside different equipment, just a difference in level can be the difference between being wormfood and immortal. Shooters reward practice; MMOs reward time spent. These aren’t necessarily fundamentally different – FPS practice requires time, and MMO PvPers need to practice their skills – but there are fundamental disparities between the way one becomes ‘skilled’ in the two kinds of PvP action. In theory, someone who has never played any given shooter could jump in and take down players who have years under their belts; that just can’t happen in MMOs. Similarly, a long-time MMO player who has spent very little time trying out PvP could easily beat players who have much more PvP time under their belts but not as much game time – newbies literally have no chance.

I never suggested that I actually did any of it. 🙂 (I also had to look this up, because I totally didn’t remember using the word ‘wormfood’.)

l33t PvPer and Guild PR Rep,
-Matchstick

Those were the immortal words I heard (er… read) when I first entered the Blood Elf newbie zone. And you know, they were right. I haven’t seen so many noobs in one place since the day EQ went live (ah, the gates of Qeynos, I knew you well).

This, of course, was after creating a new character on Hydraxis, one of the new servers that have been added along with the expansion. I didn’t have much hope of getting into Zul’jin — the queue was 680 when I tried and claimed I had a >1 hour wait. Hey Blizzard, Please split Zul’jin.

Update: So later in the evening, after an hour waiting, I finally managed to get on to Zul’jin, only to find that individual world servers (parts of the world) were crashing at a ferocious rate. End result: After creating a Blood Elf (rogue — *sigh*), then having the newbie zone crash 5 times, then taking Bais through the gate and having Outland crash, I gave up. Maybe the server patch tomorrow morning will help. Man, I hope so.

… hanging out in Ironforge. 🙂

(First use of “Force of Nature”)

That’s the title of a new article from Slate magazine. The obvious soundbite is…

It’s a shame, then, that the first massive online game to break into the mainstream is so horribly flawed.

… but it’s less biased than that over all.

I find it interesting that at least some of the problems he identifies have been addressed in Everquest 2, but EQ2 has nowhere near the following that WoW does. The problem may really just be that gamers like the lowest common denominator.

Kotaku, with all the talent for hyperbole that they are known for, are reporting that there is a rumour that a third-installment of the System Shock franchise is in the works at EA. It will be interesting to see what they’re going to make of it, but I do have my doubts. Game design, like all software fields, has gods and wannabes. Good games are made by good people.

Personally, I’m currently looking forward to BioShock. (warning: link contains spoilers.)