February 23, 2011 – 11:00 am
This is a bit of a spoiler for the newbie areas of Rift. It’s also the strongest argument I can give for playing the game, so I feel justified. Throughout the Defiant tutorial/newbie zone, you’re trying to fix the time machine that will send you back to before everything became unsalvageable. It’s the best they [...]
February 22, 2011 – 2:43 pm
So, there’s been some debate about what is a skill-based system, partially around Rift and it’s supposed skill-based system. There’s no doubt that Ultima Online uses skills, everything you can do is based around a skill you have, and those go up and down based on use. Contrast this with say, World of Warcraft which [...]
February 21, 2011 – 12:25 pm
So, I mostly ignored RIFT because of the Pen and Paper game of similar name. I was told through Twitter that it wasn’t the same, then that it used a “skill based” system that made it different enough from the other Fantasy MMOs out there, that I decided to sign up for the beta, a [...]
February 9, 2011 – 8:26 am
Earlier this week, I finally joined the IGDA. Some of that was to support my friend Corvus’ bid for for the board. But I wouldn’t have done it at all if I didn’t want to make and write about games. Games intrigue me because I’m about half writer and half programmer. Yeah, that means there’s [...]
January 13, 2011 – 11:02 am
I remember when the only “programming” game was crobots. It was a game where you programmed a robot (in a c-like language, thus the name) to fight in an arena. While I was okay with that, I’ve never been a competitive gamer, and didn’t feel I had the chops to pit my code directly against [...]
January 3, 2011 – 12:18 pm
I’m not picking a game of the year, instead I want to think about what games I’m playing, and what has left a lasting impression on me. One thing I can say about the past year, is that despite having all three major consoles, I feel less like a console gamer, and more like a [...]
November 18, 2010 – 1:07 pm
I recently picked up a copy of Enslaved as a rental, after hearing that it was reasonably short if not completely wonderful gameplay. It sounded like a good diversion, and Enslaved has the kinds of gameplay that I pref. It has melee combat, climbing through interesting terrain, and was advertised as having a strategy/decision making [...]
November 17, 2010 – 8:47 am
The other day, I was looking on a forum for HTC Eris users about whether we were going to get an official Froyo (Android 2.2) install. The top post on that topic was a link to an announcement, somewhere, and the user’s inference from that that Froyo would be rolled out to us. The following [...]
November 16, 2010 – 2:35 pm
It seems whenever I do these post-a-day commitments, there’s always a day that I can’t make it. Part of that is that I have a huge essay that’s easily 3 times as long as a typical day’s post here (or where I try to keep it, anyway). Part of it is that my work has moments [...]
November 15, 2010 – 11:39 am
Now that I’ve described aspects, and talked about them in two posts, I want to talk about why I see such potential in this. RPGs grew out of wargames, and D&D one of the oldest, still uses a battle mat and rules to move around them. CRPGS embraced the stats and strategies or pen-and-paper RPGs, [...]