Life is a Mind Bending Puzzle

In his blog today Tobold proposes an mmo where each player has a unique individual epic quest line. You could still group up and recruit friends to share your adventures but you wouldn't all be striving to kill the same ten rats over and over again. As Tobold says this "will allow grander stories, being more interesting to the player because they involve him much more." In other words we can finally have a proper "heroes journey" in an mmo. I think this is a great proposal. Consider Tobold's proposal and read my recent comment about Sacrifice: There are five main paths to the end goal one offered by each of five Gods. Each God offers a sequence of nine missions leading to a common tenth "final mission". Each God has their own style and rewards the player with unique powers and creatures for taking their missions. The really clever bit is that you can mix and match missions for different Gods leading to a wide range of different paths through the ...

I finished Sacrifice again last night. What a terrific game. It is the first time I did a full run through supporting the evil god Charnel. Charnel has some great spells ( I think his wailing wall is the best barrier spell in the game) but his creatures are a bit weak. A lot of them do damage over time which is not as useful as direct damage in the fast and furious combat that characterises much of the game. Sacrifice is one of my favourite games ever but I will admit that the single player gameplay is not perfect. Npc opponents have poor artifical intelligence and employ the same strategy throughout the game. The game seems impossibly difficult at first but once you figure out a winning strategy you can keep using it.The game can still be challenging though because of the large resource imbalance between you and your opponents at the start of each level. The gameplay may be flawed it doesn't matter. It is still great fun and the game oozes creativity and originality. Even by toda...

RPGDot's massive archive of news, reviews, guides and forums was "the place" to go for computer rpg information back in the days of Morrowind and Gothic. I was dismayed therefore to discover that the site and its daughter sites closed down completely earlier this year. Like many others I have more or less abandoned any effort to keep private copies of information, trusting instead that I can get the information I need when I need it from the internet. My precious book collection was a long time hold-out but even that has become disposable . The closure of a well loved site is a jarring reminder of how impermanent the internet really is. Is it time to panic? Should I go looking for my books back? Of course I am not the only one who worries about the loss of digital information. The following article by Susan K. Soy of Univertisty of Texas asks "Will Permanence Exist in the Digital Age" . Susan's article led me to the Internet Archive , a project which at...

I have just completed my EVE online exit survey (I didn't bother to renew my subscription when it ran out). I can't remember most of the questions, it was pretty standard stuff. Who you are , how long your have been playing, what you mainly did in game and what aer you reasons for leaving. I was a bit worried that the "reasons for leaving" questions were a bit unbalanced. For example it offered the choice of "too hardcore" but didn't offer the balancing choice of "too softcore" I amn't a statistician but it looks to me that that will distort your stats right away. Anyway that isn't what I am writing about. I am writing about a revelation that struck me while I was filling in the "any other comments" box at the end of the survey. I realised that the reason I quit EVE was because after six months I was getting bored and wanted to play other games. My revelation was that this is perfectly normal, acceptable behaviour but that mm...

An anonymous commenter just posted a very positive review of Mount and Blade in the comments to my earlier post. They point out that once you struggle through the unhelpful starting phase Mount and Blade really is a terrific game. In order to balance my somewhat negative review I am bumping that comment up to the front page by copying it here in full: Review of Mount & Blade v.1.003: Overall, I really enjoy this game. In fact, I've shelved Guild Wars and Titan Quest since I began playing this game again. Let's get the negative aspect taken care of first. This game really needed a better Tutorial. Although there is one which teaches you different techniques such as blocking, archery, melee [single, 2-handed] combat, the tutorial lacks giving the player guidance as to where to start. After plodding through various villages and garrisons [towns] and castles, I was able to figure out my options. Once I understood gameplay dynamics such as the various components affecting ...

Inspired by Tom Chick 's list of 10 defining moments in video gaming DM Osbon gives us an isight into his own gaming past. While Tom's piece is a generic list of great video game moments DM gives a more personal view and it is in this spirit that I will offer my own contribution. For me a watershed gaming moment came during the point and click era of the late 1980's. The first point and click I came across was the mildly risque " Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards ". I was used to mindlessly repetitive button pressing games so the the depth and complexity of this game was a revelation to me. Not having my own PC I stayed late in work one Friday to play Larry on an office computer. When the first rays of dawn sunshine peeped through the window I was still sitting there finishing the game. It was my first gaming all-nighter. Until that moment I hadn't realised how compelling this new medium could be. It was as if I had had a vision of the fu...

A bout of nostalgia hit me last night and I reinstalled Sacrifice. I love this game and have played through the single player campaign (through various routes) many times. I am happy to report that it installed without a hitch on Windows XP. This is such a beautiful game. It is so obviously both a work of art and a labour of love. The graphics and sound effects stand up even today and the sheer cleverness and imagination of the game is breathtaking. I realise that the game failed to achieve commercial success and I know why. The game play falls between two stools being too fast and furious for hard core RTS players at the same time too difficult for the mass market. It is particularly intimidating when starting off and the new player is immediately overwhelmed by the AI oppostion. Nevertheless the game can suck you in if you only struggle through those first few levels. If you have never tried this awesome piece of gaming history then I strongly recommend you to check it out. It has ...