Archive | Video Game

So there I was, enjoying some Anime on Netflix and the weirdness inherent in some sci-fi anime reminded me of a game I played once.

In Warframe you’re some kind of weaponized space-ninja/warrior from a bygone era awoken to the future. You use super powers and various guns and swords to vanquish hordes of not-quite humans who are doing nefarious things.

Still with me? Good.

What I like most is that nearly anything can be earned from running missions, regular events and crafting. With the exception of some cosmetic items, you can earn even some of the exclusive shiny-gold things one would normally expect to be exclusively cash-only. Though there isn’t a plethora of loot to acquire so we’re spared the idiocy of gloves and belts on our inventory list.

So what does that give us? Shooting, crafting, and some quests. I enjoy it for it’s particular spin on sci-fi though it’s not particularly deep with story and on occasion I’ve spent some time reading the wiki so I can glean some of secrets that are metered out in small quest-sized doses.

Appendix 1a: It’s free to play, if you enjoy Action Shooters like Borderlands or The Division then I couldn’t recommend this more.

Sometimes tag lines are hard to write. What do I say about a thin in five words or less. or more.

The review sold me with “Studio Ghibli meets..” I bought it on that alone. What I got was a board game with a distinct art/story style I find familiar. You play as one of several animal heroes, the king Lion having been corrupted, and are tasked with taking the crown in one of several ways. It plays like so many board games while being excellently polished and animated.

For the quality, 20 bucks is a steal and you can get it on Steam.
Here’s the Link

My latest favorite is Windward. For years I played Sid Meier’s Pirates! and would just sail around plundering Spanish galleons with little care for the plot. That alone amused me far longer than it should have with simple controls for firing your cannons and sailing against and with the wind.

Flash forward some years and we have Windward. Immediately I was caught by the Steam sale advert video. The game looked beautiful and it is. Gameplay is simple, you sail to and from towns while trading goods or running Quests and you’ll loot floating crates and barrels that have one of the commodities: Gold, Stone, Wood and Gunpowder Each commodity has it’s use though you’ll amass far more than you’ll likely ever use. Combat is almost automatic, as you sale upon an enemy ship your cannons will fire and you have a selection of manual use abilities that feature some targeting.

The world is generated when you start the game, though your progress is saved to a character name you create. I’ve sailed in single player games and Internet games with 30+ players all with the same progress as I learn the ropes. It features some easy internet sharing, so I can create a game and have my friends join me. I can even redraw the map, supposing I don’t like what it generated, I can mold the map borders to my liking.

I find a lot to like in the design, it’s very peaceful and easy to play for 5 minutes or 5 hours. This is easily my favorite game this year!

Windward

Mobile gaming.  In my new paradigm for gaming, I’ve allowed mobile games to have some of my money.  So I’ve been through Puzzles and Dragons, Fallout Shelter, a very sparing amount of Alphabear and most recently Dragonvale and Crusader’s Quest.

PAD is among my favorites for it’s puzzles.  It gives you a collection system for gathering various monsters, doesn’t require any cash investment and the gameplay is among the best features.  At once “Bejeweled” but with adventure elements and your turns aren’t timed so you’re working to make awesome combos.  Limited Time events, a calendar rotation of special dungeons and a normal progression that will keep you challenged for months, PAD ranks as #1 on my “got time to kill on your commute” list.

Also, if you’re the research intensive gamer as I am, here are two sites that can help you get a grasp on what you’re looking at.

Puzzle and Dragons database

PADherder

In fact, here is my updated PADherder page, a wall of trophies if you will.

PAD on Google Play

PAD on iTunes

Crusader’s Quest is my newest addiction.  Gameplay so reminiscent of old Super Nintendo style that I’ve found it wholly distracting.  Coupled with minimalist gameplay, its easy to pick up for a single area and then put it down again while you stand in line or wait for the bus.

on Google

on iTunes

That’s it for today.  I picked up Battlefield 4 recently, Premium Edition is on sale at roughly 20 bucks.  Some of my other friends are playing, notably Katie of katieplays.com and we team up for hijinx and mayhem as occasion allows.

I have the worst luck.  Off traipsing across the countryside in Minecraft semi-aware of my own mortality looking for rare flowers and roots.  I’d actually found several when I fell into a watery hole I couldn’t escape.

..I nearly threw my mouse across the room.  That’s the hazard of a wireless mouse.

In other news, I’m trying to organize a guest blog about Witcher 3.  We’ll see what happens.

..nearly the end. At least for my Minecraft server. I was plagued by problems I couldn’t seem to resolve. I spent most of this recent Memorial Day weekend troubleshooting an odd amount of CPU lag that resulted in terrible gameplay performance.

It was Mystcraft. And while I shall miss it, the adventures it was sure to provide, I won’t lose any sleep over it. The server runs much better and I’m nearly back to where I was Saturday evening when it all came apart.

For the interested I’m running these mods under Minecraft 1.7.10

Ars Magica 2
Thaumcraft 4
Bibliocraft

These mods are additive and provide an alternate course through the normal Minecraft progression. Ars Magica being focused around spells you carry with you in a spellbook and various boss monsters you can summon. Thaumcraft is more about Alchemy and Artifice and about combining elements to create new bits. Golems, enchanted lanterns and powerful staves are to be found here. Together with Bibliocraft I have things to build, discover and collect and a means to keep them. Bibliocraft on it’s own is quite enjoyable as it gives you bookcases and potion racks you can see your items stored upon.

Biomes O’Plenty for the plethora of additional terrain features. Treecapitator for a quality of life upgrade.

Thuamic Tinkerer and Forbidden Magic are addons for Thaumcraft adding some elements to the system I’d played with before and that I really liked. Chickenchunks as it lets me setup a farm that will cook over time while the server is running. If you play single-player this isn’t useful at all. Antique Atlas as it provides a classic “old-time” book you can build that is immediately better than the ingame map (and for less effort). There’s some tweaks for making it work with Biomes O’Plenty but that’s a discussion you can follow on the official minecraft forums.

I’ll finalize this with one of my more favorite mods in the collection, Butterflymania. This is pure personal interest. With over 200 butterflies of varying rarity and biome requirement it’s there as a rainy-day “Let’s just run around and do whatever” focus.

It was delving into Tekkit around day 3 that I started to see what this was about. Some mods focus on automating tedium of mining, collecting, refining and producing. Operating within FTB’s “Magic World 2” there were so many chests in my fortress, you almost needed a map to know where things were. But it was an adventure as each little extra bit of the mods asked for another resource I hadn’t stocked up.

Tekkit added a lot of materials to build, a lot of technology to improve upon the experience. But to me, Minecraft has always been a magical journey. A world wracked by strange forces.

So I started thinking about an earlier idea. Building my own modpack.

I did it and so I once again construct a fortress of solitude. Though this time I can husband Bees and collect Butterflies.