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[GW2] Super Achievements

My goal this month in Guild Wars 2 was to get a Super Adventure Box skin. The most relaxing way, I felt, to do so was to run through the first three zones on about 9 days. Each zone gets me 2 bauble bubbles, of which I would need 50 to get my virtual tourist t-shirt. My “daily” was a nice refreshing jaunt through the first world.

Along the way I started to consider the achievements for Super Adventure Box. I had already read Jeromai’s pleasure and pain of completing some, and to be honest it didn’t sound like fun. But, I needed help finding where to buy upgrades, and I noticed that the dedicated Guild Wars 2 wikites had been super thorough with producing a guide for each zone. I did not feel up to using hours of my time to find all the baubles or shops in a zone myself. I was more than happy to follow a guide. Continue reading [GW2] Super Achievements

Minecraft, The Return

I am not sure how I got sucked back in to Minecraft. I think it was hearing somewhere along the lines about Mystcraft. Mystcraft is one of many fine mods where players can write in books to create ages, warp to those ages, and profit or die. One simple mod completely changes how the game is played.

I got seriously, seriously sucked in. Modding has come a long way since I really played Minecraft. The big pre-official mod API seems to be Minecraft Forge because it allows mods to be used on multiplayer servers quite well. I think everybody is hoping for an official mod API for Minecraft 1.6, but Mojang seems to be tight-lipped about when it could be ready. Either way having Forge raised the water level quite a bit, in my opinion because mods didn’t have to be coded differently to handle multiplayer.

The other thing that raised the water level (again, in my opinion) was Feed the Beast (FTB). Feed the Beast is one of the best modpacks just overflowing with toys. Modpacks are still tricky-ish to make because all the mods don’t necessarily talk nice to one another. FTB made sure a huge swath of excellent mods could talk to one another. This meant that Mystcraft could run with Buildcraft and automated mines could be created in the Age of Diamond Tendrils. Dark thaumaturgic rituals in Thaumcraft could modify how bees pollinate trees in Forestry. This was a whole new game, and I sometimes find it hard to go back to vanilla in lieu of FTB.

I felt like I was graduating from Basic Lego to Technic Pirate Ninjago City with Mindstorms attachment. Continue reading Minecraft, The Return

Meaningless Progression

But isn’t it always? More specifically, from yesterday’s comments:

But what if your progress was in accomplishing something in the world, discovering story, or exploration? Essentially, if you left a legacy behind, an impact on the world that everyone could see, then it wouldn’t matter so much if you died.
— Machination

That is how A Valley Without Wind works. The character dies, but the town is still bigger, the lieutenants are still defeated, etc. (Also, RL functions somewhat similarly.)

But A Valley Without Wind is also a procedurally generated endless Metroidvania. Once you save one continent, there is a next one. And a next one. And it is not as though the NPCs are fully conscious beings, so the only person there to care is you as you run on the treadmill.

But isn’t it always?

: Zubon

Meaningless Permadeath

A Valley Without Wind has permadeath. A character dies once and s/he is gone. And then you get a new character with all the same inventory, upgrades, etc. So…

: Zubon

I’m told that there was some progress lost in the launch version of the game. Now you just respawn as a new character and head back to the mission.

Pouring a forty

As you might know by now, LucasArts has been shut down.

I’m not gonna go into the specifics. You can read those in the link above or elsewhere around the net. I’m also not gonna chastise Disney about what they do or don’t with their stuff just to score brownie points with my inner sense of nostalgia.

I just think it’s very hard to be a gamer with some amount of years behind you and not have come in contact with any of LucasArts’ productions. Whether you enjoyed them or not, they were always part of the landscape over the years. Always there.

Myself, I’m pouring a forty because of TIE Fighter, which I abused for many years, as well as the delightfully off the wall Zak McKraken and the Alien Mindbenders(*) and the several Monkey Islands. Those are mine. If you have your own bottle to add to the pouring, feel free. Comments are all yours.

I wish all those devs affected negatively by these news my sympathies and wishes for an immediate recovery. And if there were any old guns still hanging around…. o7.

(*) Yes, I’m showing my age.

[GW2] Heroes of Flame and Frost, Prelude

While Guild Wars 2 fans abound with glee over the Super Adventure Box, I do want to make sure to highlight the story instances that came with the March update. They are very good quality, especially in comparison to much of the personal story. The instances were fun, and I finally felt that I had something substantial to latch on to for Flame and Frost. Continue reading [GW2] Heroes of Flame and Frost, Prelude

Achievement Unlocked: Wander Blindly

The Basement Collection is on Steam and was part of a Humble Bundle. I have played most of these games on flash, and I presume they are all available at the usual flash sites. Aether is one of these, with a spirit evoking The Little Prince, in which you go make some planets happy.

Aether has the obvious achievement for completing the game, and then it has achievements for finding things in outer space. Five of them are obvious: the planets’ moons. Then there are eight other things in space. You would have no reason to know they exist unless you looked at the achievements or happened to find one. They are … somewhere. Just go wander in space for a while. There must be a methodical way to explore space, and once something is found you can direct others by reference to its location relative to the other planets. Until you stumble upon one of the floating things, however, you are just flying blindly about. While peaceful, this is perhaps not the highest quality gameplay to incentivize.

“Cheating” is defined collaboratively in gaming. It is not always obvious what is a bug or intended, and if not intended whether there is any negative connotation to doing something. In a puzzle game, looking up the solution is pretty clearly cheating, but you may also want to check with others for hints or “am I even going in the right direction here?” Because sometimes you are and the game is just not cooperating. So the achievement is for finding things in space, where wandering is the spatial equivalent of grinding mobs; there is no reason why The Crybaby should be in that bit of outer space, so you just keep going until you find them all (or don’t).

Looking up the locations is pretty clearly cheating, but I don’t know if the task is respectable enough to merit any negative connotation to that. In a game with trial and error gameplay, I see no shame in just seeing which combination you are supposed to find by random guessing or brute force. But at least you do not run out of air and die in space if it takes too long to find one.

: Zubon

It’s like Explorer content…

Quick Review: Lucidity

Use tools like boards and springs to guide a little girl through uneven terrain with dangerous bugs.

Lucidity was part of Steam’s Swedish Indie Pack, and I thought I would try it despite the Metacritic reviews. This was a mistake. It never became fun in the first half-hour, which is about as much benefit of the doubt as I could spare it.

You are guiding your one lemming through the level. Instead of working from a limited pool of resources, which usually gives you a lot of information about how to solve the puzzle, you get an endless stream of tools randomly generated from a small pool. An early level might have just one or two, but that grows. Avoid the enemies, walk through the fireflies, reach the end of the level.

I presume that some levels have actual puzzles, and collecting every firefly would involve some creativity. Just getting through the levels: dodge the bugs, span the gaps, and you’re done. That is occasionally frantic when the pieces that come up are not optimal, but that seems to be the whole of it. There are reportedly a few hours of gameplay, probably a few more if you want to get 100%.

The art is lovely and the music is gentle. The text snippets at the end of each level seem appropriate to the setting but irrelevant to everything else. Maybe they build to something if you get more of them.

: Zubon

Camelot Unchained Kickstarter

I couldn’t think of a clever title. Anyway, Mark Jacobs and City State Entertainment need a cool $2 million to jump start a counter-revolutionary MMO. Camelot Unchained hearkens back to those glorious days when Dark Ages of Camelot was the place to be for brutal PvP.

I’ve already said this, but I have to say it again. This might be the first Chipotle MMO. Every mechanic is made to feed the beast that is Realm vs. Realm combat. This means fighting other players, fighting against (NPC-defended) objectives, and crafting to help the realm’s war machine. There will be no fat to appease players that don’t want to RvR.

I find it kind of ironic that the possible funding of Camelot Unchained could mean that the MMO genre is more than capable of birthing this niche MMO. The irony lies largely in that Mark Jacobs’  blog is “Online Games Are a Niche Market.” $2,000,000 for a niche of a niche? I like to think that perhaps online games have outgrown their niche status.

Back to the kickstarter. There are a lot of reward tiers for Camelot Unchained. $5 for people that don’t like RvR but want to see more focused MMOs. $25 gets backers the game at the bleached bones reward level, and it goes up from there. The estimated launch for Camelot Unchained seems to be about 2015. If they don’t reach $2 million, it looks like there might be no Camelot Unchained.

I am betting that there will be plenty of Camelot Unchained features and interviews this month to keep the kickstarter in the limelight. I hope it succeeds. The more niches in our niche the better.

–Ravious