With the massive server troubles I’ve had lately I’m happy to be finally settled in a newer awesome-r stable-er place. Lately I’ve been nursing my wrists since they are already killing me while I’ve been playing games on my PC for upcoming projects, something I haven’t done since my Counter-Strike days in high school! Turns out these skills atrophy with years of neglect. Shocking.
I was a guest on the fantastic Three Moves Ahead with Troy Goodfellow and Tom Chick. I don’t play a lot of strategy games but Troy asked me to give Rise of Nations a shot and then come on the show to discuss the pronounced gender gap in the genre. The excellent other females on the panel are Lara Crigger and Tiffany Martin. I swear RoN is going to give me RSI. The last RTS I played before this was… Caesar II. Yup, way back in the day. I was in grade school and played without combat; basically used it as a city sim. We went randomly all over the damn place and I hope we get to do it again sometime now that we know each other better and will be able to focus on topic better.
Other PC games presently adding to my sore wrists:
Went through the free Zero Gear weekend. Extremely meh. It tries to be a cross between Mario Kart, Mario Party, and Micro Machines. I loved Micro Machines. This was not that. The best thing that I can say about it is that it runs at 1920. I’m sure it would handle better had I dug out my controller but I was particularly unmotivated to do so.
My brother, who was recently hooked on Modern Warfare 2, was searching for a replacement on the PC as he doesn’t own a 360. Or a Live account. And I’m not giving him mine (the system, not the account) until I manage to get myself a new 250GB one, branded or otherwise. He stumbled upon Combat Arms and asked me to join with him. Not the most balanced game in the world. I wish he’d go back to Enemy Territory. That was fun. I think I should buy him Team Fortress 2.
During the massive Steam sale I picked up World of Goo (I was on Hak5 again and we though showing off the cool modding program for it was a very cost effective segment, woo), AudioSurf, Torchlight, The Dig, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Loom, and The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition. None of these particularly press my sick quadcore system but I have the Love Beta for that. Hopefully this will go on for a while since I won’t be able to play until the middle of the week at the earliest. Now I’m also in Star Trek Online and need to invent more hours in the day so I can play more. Or hope that their servers start being up when it’s handier for me :)
Assassin’s Creed II and Arkham Asylum finally arrived at my door last week. These will compete with the infuriating original AC and my ongoing Borderlands addiction. If any of you play and picked up the DLCs packs, I’d love to put together a team for that. Zombie Island consists of great mindless fun, with some grindy quests shoved in for padding the length, and I totally suck at the arena matches as a solo sniper.
Tom and I were thrilled to have you on the show, Jenn. I knew you would do a great job, and you did. I hope you can write up more detailed thoughts on RoN later. We really didn’t have time to get into your general opinion on it. I do think we should play against each other some time soon.
I really hope you can join us again some time later. I know that strategy games are a little out of your comfort zone, but you’re an amazing panelist.
Go Canada!
Totally agree on Zero Gear. If they could sort out the lag issues the various modes might be kinda fun. Hopefully Sega All-Star racing won’t disappoint.
Battlefield Bad Company 2 is looking very promising on the modern shooter front. Again lag could kill it, like the release of Battlefield 2.
Always up for Borderlands, just name the time and place.
I’m loving Torchlight! I’m so glad Runic picked up the original Diablo/Diablo2 devs. Granted, I felt that Diablo2 was completely ruined by the art style, spending too much time above ground, (and I really held a grudge against them for socketing.), but Torchlight just feels right. That, and it’s quite a bit longer (with the interesting ancestry aspect to make it even longer) than Diablo was.
For many years, I played ET:QW (clocking some 650+ hours). Personally, I think this is still one of the more fun multiplayer games out there. Not only does it force you to work together as a team to accomplish a goal, but the maps are so well laid out that is offers exceptional replayability. I’m a little miffed with Id/Splash Damage for abandoning it so early on in it’s life cycle, and not releasing any more campaigns for it. Such a pity to see such an amazing game go to waste.
I’m happy to see such a resurgence in classic games. Games that you and I grew up on, but the younger generation has never heard of, let alone played. (Would you believe that I was playing Super Mario Bros on the Wii the other day, and some teenager came up to me and asked me what I was playing? I didn’t think it was possible to NOT know your roots like that! …and when I asked him what *his* favorite game was, he said Counter Strike: Source… it was horribly tragic.) I hope we see, in the near future, some classic games (Warcraft 1 & 2, Diablo, Starcraft, and a *slew* of others remade with modern graphics, yet not changing gameplay a bit. It’s a pipe dream, but a beautiful one.)
Long live retro gaming! :)
–HaDAk
Welcome back Jenn, always like to read your writing :)
Dont playing much (except DKC on a SNES emu on my PSP, i want to finish that one a long time) these days, to bussy with a new project and started to read the Walking Dead comics. These are awsome if you like zombie movies and games like Left 4 Dead.