I just finished my first 24 hour RPG for 1,000 Monkeys, 1,000 Typewriters. The theme was “Mr. toaster needs a soul.” I ended up writing a narrative-style teamwork and exploration focused RPG. It isn’t done, but it is a decent start. You can get it here: Appliance Adventures
First of all, I am not a true believer. I went out and bought Halo 3 on the release day because I expected a kick-ass first person shooter. I didn’t expect it to live up to the hype, but I knew it didn’t need to live up to its own impossible standards to still be an excellent game. I was only tangentially familiar with the first two Halo games, I’ve played a few rounds of multiplayer, but I did not play through either of the campaigns.
The graphics in the game are not bad. Not spectacular, but passable. It seems like the engine is very capable; I didn’t run into any slow down during any of the big battle areas. The engine also seems able to manage BIG. Scarabs, swarms of tanks, and simply huge architecture adds quite a bit to the environment.
As for the story, I feel that I am completely in the dark — which is probably expected jumping into the third game in a series without any involvement with the first two. Not that that bothers me terribly; I’m not the type that expects high literature from a first person shooter. As I said, the environments are very nice and make the setting very evocative. This helps to alleviate the ‘who cares’ feeling of playing a game with characters you have no vested interest in.
The single player campaign is pretty good, but it has a few stumbling blocks. The campaign seems pretty well paced, I’m about three quarters of the way through it, and I haven’t felt like I’m just trudging through, killing baddies. Unfortunately, the AI for your allies is completely idiotic. This is made very apparent by the vehicle based missions. By default, I would jump in the gunner position of the Warthog, and try to trust the AI to navigate the terrain. At several points, I had to take over the driving to navigate to the next checkpoint. This wouldn’t have been so bad if I could rely on the AI to man the turret with any accuracy. When going into battles, I found that I just wouldn’t survive if I tried to stay in the Warthog. I did much better charging the Warthog at an enemy vehicle, and jumping out and taking over their vehicle. This, of course, brings up the fact that the enemy AI is not that intelligent. It is odd; the behavior is detailed — if you kill a Brute in charge of a group of Grunts, you can’t be sure how the grunts will react. Sometimes they will run away, sometimes hide, sometimes stick a grenade on themselves and run at you. Despite this variety of reactions, they don’t seem intelligent. Attack someone, and they (might) take cover. However, they will walk right out of that cover a few seconds later. High on production value, low on logic.
Luckily, the problems experienced in the single player campaign don’t follow the game online. I haven’t had a chance to try either the online campaign mode, or the Forge, but the standard deathmatch multiplayer is a lot of fun. I am not usually a console FPS’er, I’ve never been able to do well with a console controller. Halo 3 is very usable; while I do find myself cursing the controls on occasion, they seem very smooth and relatively intuitive.
My GamerTag is Aaarrrgggghhh if anyone would like to play with (or against) me.
Just saw this link on BoingBoing. Galaxiki is a collaborative fictional galaxy. A randomly generated galaxy to serve as a canvas for story creation? How cool is that? I haven’t yet created an account, but I have done a little exploring, and I like what I see. The site gives lots of crunchy data on each solar system and planet.
You can buy a system for a donation of at least $6, but it is free to explore and work with the community solar systems.
When I was younger, (about 8 years ago, I believe) I was a big fan of Last Unicorn Games’ Star Trek RPG. I don’t believe I ever played a campaign longer than a few games, but I had a wonderful time crafting settings and scenarios. I probably still have some of my solar systems sitting around. I might have to dig ‘em out and see if I can find any analogs to these randomly generated systems.
I’m kinda bummed. The game store I frequent, Wexford Hill Hobbies is closing down. This was probably the best game store I have ever seen; they had loads of things, but more importantly (for me, as a customer) they had a game room almost as large as the selling floor. There were countless Sunday afternoons spent assaulting this objective or sinking that pocket battleship. Guess I’m going to have to find a new place to game.
As for the vultures — well, everything is 50% off in the store. I stopped by, but it looked like it had been picked pretty clean (and the decision was made public on Saturday evening). If you are in the Dayton, OH area, it would be a good idea to pay your respects/see what phat loot you can score.
You are currently browsing the archives for the Gaming category.