Gaming

I recently bought Rez HD for my XBox 360, which is an XBox Live Arcade game that costs 800 (about US $10).

The game is very heavy on synæsthesia-inducing effects, at least for me; Colors just grow in intensity as the sound grows, with bright lights flashing around when things go pop! on screen. Finishing a couple of areas leaves me feeling wiped out, but in a good way. Not like running a marathon or what have you, but just drained of most types of energy in a pleasant way.

I think Rez is hard to explain without videos, but once you play it, you’ll either get into it and understand, while the controller is thmp-thmp-thmping in your hands, or you just won’t understand it, and pass.

For the oldschool Rez players, your 360 controllers double as trance vibrators; You can have controllers 2, 3, AND 4 just buzzing away on your lap if you’d like.

The best thing about it being on XBox Live Arcade is that you can download a demo of the first level, play it through to the boss at the end, and half-kill the boss before it tells you that to finish this up, you’ll need to pay for it. So, uh, if any of you have a 360, I’d suggest downloading the demo, putting on some headphones or cranking up that 5.1, and enjoy this in widescreen mode. It so, so makes it worth it.

The other day, I went to log in at SecondLife.com, so I could download the software to my laptop for an experiment (Would I be able to run SL on the laptop I just recently bought? The answer was “Heh, not really.”).
I noticed that I had been gaining L$ (That is, Linden Dollars) at a rather steady rate since I went homeless, and I wasn’t sure how.

I checked carefully, and it seems that somehow, someone signs up with my Referral URL (which has been posted on numerous sites, including here, as part of my signature, among things), and they go for premium accounts. Those premium accounts turn into many L$ for me, and I can turn said L$ into USD$ legally.

I checked on the current conversion, and it seems that I’ll get USD$62 from the L$18100 I have, so I’m feeling pretty perky about that.

I finally caved in.

Since I wanted something else to play on my DS, and I came to the realization that we only live once, I decided to buy the R4 card for the Nintendo DS.

I simply wanted a card that had better compatibility than this Datel Games ‘n Music card I got at Wal-Mart a few weeks ago. Some of the homebrew stuff just does not run on the GnM all that well (DSLinux, for example), and I think it’s because of an artificially imposed bottleneck on the card itself.

So hopefully, I’ll be having some kind of fun with this thing next week.

So, the other day, I was sitting around with the guys, playing Xbox360.

They talked me into trying out one of those shooters with them, despite my relatively firm stance about first/third person shooters and consoles (I don’t like them to be together, bob. They should not touch~). It was this game called Gears of War.

When I started playing, I was a bit unsteady with the controls, because I’m used to having omnidirectional aiming in one hand, using the mouse. It took a little to get used to the sticks, since I can’t whip around to kill nearly as fast on the controller AND retain my fine aim that I’m used to.

But, I plowed forward like a trooper, and my first experience on ‘Insane’ settings impressed the guys.

Apparently, I’m good at: Getting to objectives without dying, Tossing the grenades, Conserving ammunition, Finding answers to puzzles that I’ve never seen.

I didn’t have to be picked up by my partner (the only way to get up when facing death in the form of a large red gear plastered in the middle of your screen is to be tagged by your partner. It encourages you to communicate with the partner to get things done) very often, though I did have to help one of the other partners up off the ground a lot.

Jason was pretty good with this, but Zeke is a bit death-prone.
Both of them communicate their part of the plan with me well, and I try to do just as much in return (eg: I told Zeke not to move until I exclaimed that “I am the Light” in one level, because traveling in darkness will almost immediately kill you, instead of letting you face death), but it’s kinda different for me to actually be playing a shooter in a cooperative mode.

Still, I was actually impressed by the game play, and the need for tactics, dodging, wall-crawling, crouching, and overall just staying alive.

It’s like, we’ve come so far since Unreal Tournament, Doom, and Duke Nukem 3D.

I’m gonna miss my shield belt, though.

Even though I officially left my constantly paid status in Anarchy Online a while back (I do renew the subscription for a month, every few months, simply because I can’t bear to let go of Araiya so easily), I still like to play online games.

I think I’m strange in my methodology of playing them. I seem to like to go online to usually play in an area by myself. I don’t like to share with anyone else that often, unless the benefit to myself is greater than playing alone (eg: teaming with someone to be able to deal greater damage to greater enemies, to gain extra experience, such as when fighting Hecklers in Anarchy Online’s Elysium region).

I think it’s because online content can change on a whim, and the trade marketing can fluctuate on a heartbeat. There’s almost something new every time I play some games online, and that keeps me playing.

Fallen Sword, for example, is a game I just started playing recently, thanks to a coworker who talked me into it.
I’m getting into it more and more as a substitute for Kingdom of Loathing, since I need to do something after my 200 turns burns off.
While Fallen Sword is fairly simple to play, it has enough of my interest to keep going to see what’s there. I’m finally getting some experience, and earning a few of their bonus currency, called “Fallen Sword Points“.
* Note: Both of the Fallen Sword links will earn me a few of their points if you were to sign up with the game.

I can’t neglect my old favorite, Kingdom of Loathing. I like the constant potshots at various things, and enjoy laughing at the pain of others. The entire game is dirty jokes and poking fun at various things, as well as some genuine humor.

I also like to play Nowhere Else and Beyond, but it’s a little rough on my laptop to play it, or anything else, lately. ;(

So, I’ve been playing NetHack on my USB stick lately, since I’m getting bored with the internet (just a little).

Unfortunately, the computers here at the Salvation Army keep me from visiting the NetHack (I don’t think it likes the word ‘hack’ in the domain name, really) homepage, so I can’t go there and find out if there’s a way to get NH to stop prepending the name of the computer I’m on to the save files. I have to go in and change the name of the save file to get NetHack to realize that I have a valid save that I’d like to continue playing with.

Perhaps one of you reading this would know the answer to my question?

[tags]NetHack, Save Game[/tags]

A random topic for a random post, or so it would seem.

I’ve spent my days at work playing Nowhere Else and Beyond, simply because I’m waiting on phone calls to come in. All I do when I’m not bothering with quests, is farm for ingots of raw material. The ingots I farm for get sold to someone for large chunks of in-game gold, which makes me happy as a clam.

I use that gold to buy better equipment and spells so that I can go longer in my quest for thousands upon thousands of ingots. By thousands and thousands, I do mean that I farmed up 2050+ Iron ingots alone yesterday. I don’t even remember the gold or platinum count, and I know that I need to switch dungeons to farm up any mythril. It’ll happen eventually. I’m even playing the mini-game that deals with running a mining rig, and I’ve got 5th or 6th place for everything, on average.

What saddens me is that I’m basically being paid to play games while waiting for phone calls. I sort of feel like I’m one of those Chinese Gold Farmers we joke about in most MMORPGs.

I actually hope for more phone calls today, and I hope they’re the short kind. A whole mess of 10 minute calls would do wonders for me. I mean, back to back to back to back 10 minute calls.