This game has HOW many endings!?!

As I mentioned a few days ago, I recently finished Chrono Trigger. I learned shortly afterward that I had just witnessed ending #1... of 13! Oh, and that doesn't even count the variations that can occur inside of a single ending. Excuse my language here, but that's absolutely crazy-go-nuts.

Anyway, here are my final thoughts for the game:

Loved

• Premise. I REALLY liked the whole time travel idea. It was really cool to go to 600 AD, leave Robo to plant tree, then warp to 1000 AD and see a forest and a Robo shrine. The game used the mechanic very well and it was hands down what made the game as good as it was. If a game was made that was similar to this in length, weapons, features, etc and set in a semi-bland fantasy setting, the game wouldn't be half as good as Chrono Trigger.
  
• Variety. This game was exceptionally varied. There were tons of different weapons and armor pieces, a fair number of unique techs, dungeons that seldom felt like a copy of another one, and even the party members were quite different from each other. Very rarely as I was playing the game did I feel like I was doing something I had already done before, even when the game sent me back to the same area but in a different time. I'll definitely give kudos to Squeenix for putting so much stuff in this game, especially when you consider the original SNES version is 14 years old!
• Fun. Regardless of my criticisms of the game (and I have a fair number of them), I enjoyed myself. At the end of the day, I think there is a lot to be said for that.
• Volume of Content. There is a metric crapload of stuff to do in this game... even if you do basically nothing other than the main story you are still going to play for 10-15 hours. If you do EVERYTHING you could possibly do, you could probably play for 2 to 3 times that.
  

Hated

• Techs. I think techs were supposed to be the big selling point of this game, but I felt like they fell short. I already talked about it quite a bit, but the 2 and 3 player tech combos were extremely lackluster. For how hard they were to earn and pull off, they really should have been devastating, but they just... weren't. Additionally, there were a fair number of throwaway techs in the game, i.e. I hardly ever used the very first techs that I earned with each character late in the game. I always feel like every skill/spell I earn in an RPG should have some value even later on.
• Unmemorable Equipment. As I mentioned above, the game had a LOT of equipment... and I mean a LOT. I was so constantly upgrading everything, that nothing ever really stuck out as being good or interesting. I had to pull up the stats of everything to see if it was an upgrade or not. When you actually do get a memorable piece of equipment, Masamune the legendary sword, it actually stops being competitive before the end of the game. While there is a quest to upgrade it (I didn't do it), it still felt kind of lame to unequip Masamune for a rusty spell sword (or something... like I said most of it wasn't memorable). Furthermore, by the end of the game I had amassed so many "trinkets" (little items like a ring, etc that boost a single stat) that I had a hard time sorting through them or even finding new ones I had picked up in my inventory. I definitely think they should have toned down the equipment a bit and provided fewer, more memorable items.
• Endings. Chrono Trigger basically allows you to go and fight the end boss at any time you choose, and, depending on when you do it, the ending changes. While I'll freely admit that that I only saw the first, most basic ending, from what I've read you usually need to replay the game to see the other endings (you keep your equipment from the previous playthrough). Perhaps if I was REALLY bored or a 14-year-old kid with a limited gaming budget I would do that, but as it is I just don't have any desire. One ending (with some variations) was definitely good enough for me.
• Linear to Open Transition. Another one I already mentioned, they really should have done this different... probably providing more openness from the beginning. Not sure, but I didn't like it.
  

I could probably come up with more on both sides, but these lists are pretty good. It's definitely one of games where as I played it I could see why some people are so fanatical about it (*cough* Shums *cough*), but it just didn't quite do it for me. I don't regret playing it or anything, and I did enjoy the fact it was on the DS, but at the end of the day it just didn't impress me. If you have a DS and even a passing interest in jRPGs, play it; you won't regret it... just don't expect perfection.

Maintain your amateur status

Welcome to the first installment of Flash Game Friday. Each Friday I'll review/recommend a new flash game for you all to enjoy. This week's game: Dolphin Olympics 2.

The original Dolphin Olympics was a game I stumbled across a couple of years ago. I distinctly remember playing it very obsessively for like 2 days then basically forgetting about it completely. Well, last week when I was mentioning to my friend/editor, Shums, that I should write about fun flash games, he immediately recommended DO2. The next thing I knew, two hours had passed and the skin on my middle finger was sore from holding down the up button on the keyboard.

Dolphin Olympics is a deceptively simple game. The basic premise is that you control the dolphin as he jumps out of the water. While in the air, you can rotate him around both of his 2D axes to perform various tricks. By combining tricks, you can string together a masterful Tony Hawk style combo. Furthermore, if you reenter the water at the correct angle and quickly jump again, your combo not only continues, but you get a bit of a height boost to your next jump. The idea is to do as many varied tricks as possible while continually entering and exiting the water as perfectly as possible. The game is also deliciously bite-sized: each round lasts only two minutes.

Seems pretty basic, right? So why is it so addictive? I think it's the desire to pull off a perfect run. You can have perfect jumps for a minute and a half and then belly flop and lose all your momentum. Each time that happened to me I would immediately restart the game… and boy oh boy, did it ever happen. Instead of getting discouraged, I would just try again. And again. And again. In fact, while writing this blog entry I played it 5 or 6 times.

The ultimate goal in the game is to get as far into space as you can. While I've only made it to Mars, Shums says he reached the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, a fantastic Douglas Adams reference that fits perfectly with the dolphins (you HAVE read "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,"right? Right?).

Just to save you the trouble, DO2 is superior to the original DO in pretty much every way. Seriously, don't even bother.

Now, go play Dolphin Olympics. I’m serious. Oh, and many kudos to Alan Rawkins for making such an addictive game.

Alright, now I have to get back to… crap. Another belly flop. Hmm… maybe I’ll just go one more time…

Throwback Thursday

I decided to start a couple of theme days on my blog, the first of which I'm calling "Throwback Thursday." Every Thursday I'm going to discuss an old school game: an old PC game, something from the 8/16 bit eras, etc. I decided to retroactively start it last week with my post on gambling in Diablo 2, but this week I'll be discussing my time in Chrono Trigger which I conveniently just finished last night.

Chrono Trigger DS is a remake of a SNES jRPG from the early 90's. It has a rather interesting time travel premise that plays a huge part in the game; you essentially visit the same world in 5 different eras of history spanning from 65,000,000 BC (BC? Did the world of Chrono Trigger have a Christ? Why didn't HE save us from Lavos?) to a post-apocalyptic future. As far as a game premise, it's actually quite clever and works pretty well. Early on, your time travel escapades are limited to entering and exiting times at very specific locations, while later in the game you get a ship that basically lets you fly anywhere/anytime you want. The combination of the two is perhaps my first beef with the game.

The vast majority of your time in Chrono Trigger is relatively linear; the game actually blocks off your time travel portals on a number of occasions forcing you to complete some sort of goal in the time you're in before you can resume time surfing. While I generally prefer more open ended RPGs, I thought it worked pretty well here. It was pretty much always clear where I was supposed to go while still giving me a bit of freedom. Once you get the time travel ship though, perhaps 5/6th of the way through the game, the game opens up dramatically. Generally I would think that it would be a good thing, but it was such a stark contrast with relatively little explanation, that I suddenly found myself having no idea where, when, or what I was supposed to be doing. The game also throws you a handful of option sidequests at this point, which, once again, I felt weren't quite clear enough in a lot of their goals. Also, this all happened so late in the game that I almost felt like there was just no need; my gear was quite good and I was already at a decent level. If all these side quests had been available in some shape or form throughout most of the game, it would have been excellent. Perhaps I just took to long to play the game, but by the time I got to that point in the game, I was pretty much just ready to be done.

There was another thing about the game that just didn't quite live up to hype: "techs." Techs (or techniques for short I guess) is the magic/special moves that your characters can perform. As the game progresses you earn dual and even triple techs that your characters can perform together. It sounds like a great idea on paper, but in my experience the power of the dual and especially the triple techs wasn't any more (and sometimes less!) than it was to have each character do a tech on their own. If you are going to go through the effort of leveling up 3 characters together (or even equipping a special item for lots of the triple techs), they should be AMAZING, but they just... aren't. I'm pretty sure I could count on one hand the number of triple techs I performed in the whole game and on two the number of dual techs. It was disappointing to have such an interesting feature be so utterly worthless.

While there were certainly plenty of things that I didn't really like, the game as a whole was definitely a pleasant diversion. It provided over 20 hours of game play for a direct play through, which is a pretty big helping for a DS game.

Expect a full set of final thoughts on Saturday, while tomorrow will introduce my other new "special" daty: Flashgame Friday. See you then.

In the meantime, feel free to suggest any old school games (preferably ones that you think I've played, although I'm not opposed to firing up an emulator) that you'd like me to discuss next week.

Fill in the blank

I haven't been playing much on the PC lately, partially because I was out of town for the weekend and partially because I just don't have any PC games I'm really excited about. I decided to pick back up Chrono Trigger for the DS, a game that I had originally received for Christmas and just sort of stopped playing a few months ago. I'll probably writeup a full post on the game later, but for now I want to discuss one of the games "features:" the ability to change the names of the characters.

In case any of you are not familiar with the game, when a character joins your party, the game gives you the ability to change the characters name. I guess it's really just giving you the ability to set the name of the character, but in a couple of instances, the game has previously referred to him by his "real" name. For instance, early on you meet a character named Marle who later joins your party. At that time, it brings up the name screen and allows you to put in whatever you want, with Marle being already filled in as the default. I have NO idea why this feature exists. I can just imagine a conversion between two tweens back in the early 90's when this was released:

Tween1: Wow! I love the fire attack that Accul has when you combine it with Elram's ice.
Tween2: Umm... you mean Lucca and Marle?
Tween1: No. Accul and Elram.
Tween2: You're an idiot.

See? Recipe for confusion.

Okay, I think perhaps I'm missing the real beauty of this: Chrono Trigger madlibs! I think I should play through the game again after having set all the characters names to various body parts with the word "My" infront of them. Then perhaps I could have seen comments like this:

MyFace: We must follow MyNose!
MyLeg: I can't believe MyKnee is gone...
MyButt: I have an amazing fire attack!

And so forth. Two words: Comedy. Gold.

Well, that's all for now. I have to go see if I can use Maginicus, Amphibio, and Anaylium to finally save Cronicial... or something like that.

New Domain Name!

Godaddy.com was having a deal for $2 domain name registration so I registered Morinar.com and pointed it at the blog. You can now get here merely by typing www.morinar.com into your browser.

Caveat: typing "morinar.com" on it's own (without the www) doesn't seem to work, due to some wonko-ness in the DNS CNAME mojo.

Bonus points: anybody know how to make "morinar.com" work with Blogger?

Edit: I figured out that there are multiple ways to do it, including via Blogger itself. Of course in my monkeying around, I set stuff up wrong and now it's broken until things update. I turned off the domain name until then.

Penumbra - Final Thoughts

Penumbra was definitely a crazy roller coaster ride with plenty of ups and downs. Here's my break down:

Loved

• The physics system. The drag a door/spin the valve/flip the switch mechanics were just a whole lot of fun. It's something I had never seen in a game before and added a lot to the tension. There were a couple of moments for me that were made more awesome simply by my trying to move stuff out of the way and drag a door open in time.
• Old school feel. Penumbra felt like an old school adventure game. It had inventory combining, puzzles, and even a spot of pixel hunting. It truly felt like a throw back to the old days of adventure gaming. I think it was the only adventure game I've ever played that combined a first person view with world interactions in such a way.
• The setting. The whole cave/installation system was a great place to set this game. It was a perfect explanation for it being dark most of the time while definitely adding to the tension.
  
• Horror. This had both nervous, heart beating moments and as well as jump out your chair scares. It think it's incredibly difficult to make a game that is actually scary, but Frictional definitely did it here.
• Price. I paid $5 for all three on Steam... I declare that to be the deal of the year! Honestly, even at $10-$20 for all three, it's still a solid value, even if the individual episodes aren't more than a few hours each.
  

Hated

• Enemies. In Overture they were absolute pushovers and I dispatched every single one I came across with my pick. In Black Plague, I had no way of attacking them at all, and I just ran from all of them. They should have combined the trapping idea from Overture with the no weapons of Black Plague. In Overture, there were crates to trap the dogs in as well as fenced areas where you could lure the dogs and then turn on some steam. There was no reason to ever lure a dog into either, as the dogs were just so easy to kill. If that had existed in Black Plague, however, I would have gone out of my way to get rid of the infected one at a time.
• Inconsistencies Between Games. On a 1 to Scary scale, Overture was like a 5, Black Plague was a 9 or 10, and Requiem was probably a 1. The inconsitency in scariness made the games feel really disjointed. The enemies were another huge discrepancy. In Overture, there were spiders and dogs, in Black Plague there were infected only, and Requiem had no enemies at all. Seeing spiders in Black Plague or infected in Requiem would have helped tie the games together a bit more I think.
• Requiem. While probably not a bad game on it's own, Requiem was a HUGE let down after playing the first two games. I won't rehash it's short comings too much as it was the topic of a previous post, but they definitely should have done something different there. If Requiem was the first game in the series and it was used to introduce you to the game play mechanics, I think it would have worked a lot better. In fact, it would probably be worthwhile to play it as the first game in the series. The story elements won't make sense and could possibly spoil something for you (not sure if it would), but the excitement/fun would steadily ramp up as you went through the other two games.
  

All in all, the 3 Penumbra games are excellent. I would recommend them to anybody who likes a good scare and especially people who enjoy puzzle games.

Still not sure what I'm going to play next, but hopefully I'll have something for you all in another day or two.

Gambling for Gear

I haven't started into any new games recently, so I figured I'd post something I've been wanting to since I started this blog. I want to gab about the glories of gear gambling.

A friend of mine (Plisskin in the comments here) and I recently decided we wanted to play through a co-op game together. After comparing what we both had and were willing to play, we settled on Diablo II.

For those of you who aren't up on your gaming history, Diablo II was released in 2000 and it's expansion was released in 2001. At this point, you are probably saying, "YOU WERE PLAYING A 9-YEAR-OLD GAME!?! ARE YOU CRAZY!?!" To which I would respond, "Yes, yes I am, but that has nothing to do with Diablo II."

Diablo II has held up better than just about any game I've ever played. I played it back in 2000 and I've played it a handful of times since then. Now, there have been plenty games that have tried to be Diablo but with better graphics (Titan Quest, Sacred, etc), but, in my opinion, they all pale in comparison to the original... 2D graphics and all.

Diablo II is delightfully fast paced with a basically never-ending horde of enemies always coming in the from the edge of the screen. The classes are diverse, the spells/abilities are relatively interesting, and the game is completely random in both loot and dungeon layouts. Diablo II is a classic example of wanting to play just a little bit longer to try and get that new bow or a unique helm, which brings me to the title of my post.

For those of you who haven't Diablo II (Wait. You haven't played Diablo II? Stop reading and go buy it. NOW), there is a fantastic feature in the game that allows you to spend money for a chance at getting a new piece of gear. You get to choose what type of item to gamble for (belt, ring, sword, etc) and told how much it will cost you (it's generally a LOT), then you click and hope for the best. After you get done holding your breath and look at what you have received (you HAVE to hold your breath when you gamble in Diablo II... it's a rule), you say a little swear word and then sell that piece of garbage back to the vendor (NOTE: if the suffix of the item is "of worth" it's a guarantee that the item is not worth much). This you do over and over and over again until the stars align and you get a mystical rare bow... which of course isn't as good as what you are already wielding.

What then is the appeal of gambling in Diablo II? I DON'T KNOW. I hardly ever get anything I can use and I tend to just waste a lot of money. I do know one thing though... I CAN'T STOP DOING IT.

Here's my general plea to game developers: put this feature into more games. It's awesome and it gives me something to do with extra cash in the late game, something that seems to plague nearly every RPG (even MMOs!) ever made.

Ohh.... imagine if I can gamble for Tier 9 gear in WoW... or for a purple lightsaber in SWTOR...

Drool...

Ending on a low note

As you've probably already read, I think the Penumbra series is great: the setting, the old school adventure game feel, the physics system, and pretty much everything in it is really top drawer. That being said, the final installment in the series, Penumbra: Requiem, can only be described as a severe let down.

Requiem picks up right where Black Plague ends; you are sitting at a computer when you are suddenly clubbed on the back of the head. You are then taken to a (dream? hallucination? real place?) new area where you make your way through 9 "levels." Now, in all fairness, Requiem is billed as an expansion pack to Black Plague rather than a proper third chapter, but I still felt like it should have carried its own weight.

In each of these levels, you must find 1-3 "keys" which open the elevator door a portal that takes you to the next "level." Just so we are clear, the game actually calls them "levels," something which felt like a crazy departure from the setting of the game. The gameplay is instantly familiar and plays exactly like the previous two games. Each level is set in a slightly different, familiar area (outside, the temple, the installation, etc) and basically just throws at you a handful of the same sort of puzzles you've already faced. There is even GLaDOS a computerized voice that informs you how many keys are remaining or that you need to exit "before it becomes compulsory." The game completely lacks any sort of enemies which felt exceptionally bland and completely devoid of tension compared to the first two games. As you've probably guessed, the game felt more like a very low-budget Portal remake than a part of the Penumbra series.

Another thing that really annoyed me about the game were the futuristic elements. In at least two levels, I was rolling a kind of blue glowing ball around that was meant to power something or another. I even had to dodge some laser beams that would inexplicable cause it to teleport back to where I had originally obtained it. In another level, I had to pickup an exploding ketchup bottle (okay, I actually thought that was kind of funny) and then throw it into a particle field where it would then be teleported to one of three locations... but that was only after I had set some boxes on anti-gravity platforms to get up there. All things considered, it really didn't feel like it fit into the Penumbra world at all.

I think if I had played Requiem on it's own, I would have thought it was a decent little (2.5ish hours) Portal clone with an interesting physics system. Having played it at the end of the Penumbra series, however, I was only let down.

This was a short post, mostly because Requiem just didn't really have any "moments" for me. It was largely forgettable. Next time, however, I'll do an overall likes/dislikes for the Penumbra series as a whole.

For now though, I don't know what to play next and I'm looking for suggestions. I have Gothic 3 Forsaken Gods and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, both of which seem to be broken past playable (I blame my ATI video card). I also have Zelda: Twilight Princess on the Wii which I've never played. I'd also be willing to entertain any game suggestions for sub-$20 PC games, or perhaps pull out an old game (Oblivion/Morrowind playthrough? DLC for Fallout3?). Anything you guys would like to see me play?

Penumbra: Black Plague

I'm not giving this post a catchy title because, frankly, this game doesn't need one. This game was absolutely superb; it is hands down the best horror game I've played since Clive Barker's Undying.

Black Plague picks up directly from where Overture leaves off. In Overture you navigate through some mines and find yourself in a much more modern installation of some kind at the end. The last thing that happens in Overture is Philip (you) gets a smack in the back of the head and blacking out. As Black Plague beings, you awaken inside a locked room. Soon after escaping, you begin to learn of the dark secrets that surround your father and this "abandoned" research area.

As for actual game play, there is honestly very little to distinguish Black Plague from Overture, which quite honestly is a good thing. One thing that is VERY different here is a lack of melee weapons. As I mentioned in my previous Penumbra post, the enemies in Overture provided relatively little tension due to how easy it was to merely pull our your pick axe and swing until said enemy was dead. Due to the lack of weapons in Black Plague, I was forced to be much more creative.

Not far into the game, I had my first run in with an "infected." Let me set the stage:

I found a door that was electronically locked. Luckily enough, there was a relay box nearby and I was able to sever the wires. Just down the hall from the locked door was another door that the game made pretty clear I could not enter. I entered the room I had unlocked and walked towards the back where I could see there was a syringe inside a cabinet. As soon as I picked up the syringe, I heard something that sounded VERY unfriendly come through that other door out in the hall. Philip then informed me (via an on screen message) that it was time to hide. My heart was pounding as I frantically searched the room for some where to hide... I couldn't see any place! I got behind the door and ducked down hoping for the best. As I sat there holding my breath, I saw a flash light beam throw its light through the doorway as the door was ripped open. As the light beam turned to focus on me, I was greeted by something very similar to this:

The sound that then escaped my throat could probably be described as a cross between a weeping child and a slowly dying rabbit.

After a few attempts, I eventually figured out I could hide behind a desk whilst willing Philip to pray for invisibility. I’m not sure which god(s) he believed in, but it seemed to work.

The infected in this game were a VERY nice touch and added a lot of tension; throughout the entire game, you face a handful of these guys and there is never any way to dispatch them. Which, perhaps, is my one criticism of the game: I went from trivially killing my enemies to having no choice but to run from them. I definitely think that it was better here, but there were at least two times I was being chased in an enclosed space by an infected and all I did was run from one end of the space I had to the other dodging the attacks while trying to figure out what I was supposed to be doing. Minor quibble aside, they were a LOT creepier than the lame zombie dogs in the first game.

Seriously, what the hell ARE these things?

Hands down the most delightful twist in this game was Clarence. Without spoiling too much, Clarence was the entity that took up space in my head as he worked to infect me. His ability to affect my perception made for some very nervous moments as fake dogs and spiders would appear out of thin air and run directly for me. Additionally, he basically spent most of the game making fun of me for being pathetic; I kept waiting for him to call me meat bag. It just seemed appropriate.

Towards the end of the game, I managed to flush Clarence from my body… who quickly took up residence in a nearby deceased infected. As you can guess, he was NOT very happy with me. A room away, I realized he was coming for me so I bolted for the exit. A minor expletive escaped my mouth as I realized that there was a file cabinet in front of it. I quickly pulled it out the way and heard a more serious expletive escape my mouth as I discovered that the door opened inward and I had failed to move the cabinet far enough back. Clarence merely laughed as he ripped me apart from behind.

The setting in Black Plague was a lot better than in the first game. The research installation was an exceptionally creepy place and I was definitely on edge throughout most of the game. In my opinion, the puzzles were better, the “companions” were more interesting, and it was just overall much more polished than the first. Finally, it did a fantastic job of tying up all the loose ends from both games. Play Overture to set the stage for Black Plague and play Black Plague to be impressed.

That only leaves Requiem, which will be the topic of my next post. Not to spoil anything, but it was definitely a let down. I may wrap that into my overall final thoughts depending on whether or not I can come up with anything interesting to write about it (it may be challenging).

Friends and Fire Hands

I had a very productive game playing weekend; I finished my second play through of Dark Messiah of Might and Magic and I completely finished Penumbra. I'll most likely be breaking my Penumbra experiences into the next 2 or 3 posts. But first, I'll recount the last half of Dark Messiah.

When I left off, I was just starting Chapter 7... which was largely uneventful. Lightning made pretty short work of all the goblins and orcs I came across. I even picked up the lightning shield (even though I couldn't wield it) because it made me feel more awesome for some reason.

The rest of the chapters required some new tactics. Starting in Chapter 8, you begin to face large quantities of Vampire Knights (I think that's what they are called). They are pretty much like the regular melee soldiers you've fought previously, except they are MUCH faster and undead. Being undead, they had no weaknesses; neither fire nor lightning do them much damage (I'm pretty sure I threw 5 or 6 fireballs at one once). Due to the difficulties I was having, I dropped some skill points into another new spell: Charm. Once I did, I wondered why it had taken me so long to pick it up.

My new strategy basically involved me running into a room of guys, charming the meanest looking one, then running around until I could cast charm again. Maybe it's just me, but I think there is something absolutely delightful about watching enemies kill each other. It seriously reminded me of playing Bioshock with a decoy.

When I played through Bioshock (both times), my general strategy was to:

1. Drop a decoy in the middle of a group of enemies
2. Watch them kill each other trying to hit the decoy
3. Hit the remaining enemy once with the crowbar (pipe?) Editor's note: It's a wrench.
   
4. Grin
   

My enemy charming strategy worked great all through Chapters 8 and 9.

In the Epilogue, I got a new spell: Inferno. Inferno is basically like having a flamethrower in place of your arm. It burns mana like crazy, but by that point in the game I had buffed my mana regen and had so many mana potions I couldn't pick up new ones. Inferno became my spell of choice. In short, it absolutely decimated everything I came across. My revised strategy:

1. Run into a group of enemies
2. Cast Sanctuary (shield spell)
3. Spin in a circle whilst spewing fire from my hand
4. Watch enemies burn and fall down while I laugh maniacally
   

I quickly finished the game and saw the two extra endings (I had chosen the "evil" path this time) without much fuss.

A short batch of final, Final Thoughts:

• I grossly underrated magic in my first play through. I feel like you'd have to put quite a few points into it to make it worthwhile (buff your mana pool and your mana regen, etc), but it's definitely more impressive than I gave it credit for. Even as a melee character, I think you could just pick up stuff in the defensive tree (Heal and Sanctuary) and receive a big help.
  
• Until you get a really great shield, staves are the way to go. Even though they do less damage, their group attack abilities are amazing. Being able to stun enemies is ridiculously helpful when you are fighting more than one.
• The game is balanced a lot more intelligently at normal. After playing through in Hard and Normal, it's pretty obvious they balanced the game for Normal and then just sort of jiggled the numbers around for the other two difficulties. Do yourself a favor: just play it on Normal.
• None of the decisions you make really have any sort of impact on the game at all. The endings are all remarkably similar and lack any real reason to play the game through again. If you are playing for the first time, just play the "good" way so you can used the blessed weapons.

That concludes my time in Dark Messiah of Might and Magic... I promise. Next up will be the second episode and expansion to Penumbra.

Sweet, Sweet Revendications

Last night I found myself in a bad spot: I had forgotten to start the second episode of Penumbra downloading and I couldn't seem to get S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky to run for more than a couple of minutes without crashing. I quickly kicked off the download process in Steam and decided I would start a new Dark Messiah game.

I decided that this time I would play as a magic user who wielded a staff. Also, to protect my sanity, I would play on Normal rather than Hard. The events that followed were absolutely glorious.

I'm not sure if it was the fact that I was playing on Normal or that I had gotten quite a bit better at combat or that I had seriously underestimated the awesomeness of staves, but I absolutely MASSACRED EVERYONE.

Since it takes a while to get any decent offensive spells, I found myself using my staff almost exclusively. The staff has a delightful ability to stun and knock down opponents and also works quite well on groups of enemies. I had previously discovered that staves could be useful when fighting a pack of ghouls, but I definitely didn't appreciate its mystical powers. I quite literally felt like a one man wrecking crew. I would just charge packs of guys and then start circle-strafing whilst landing blow after blow on them. I would stun them and kick them off a ledge or knock them down and finish them. Some of them thought they could limp away from me after they were wounded, I just gleefully laughed and brought my staff down on the back of their heads.

Within 30 minutes of starting, I found myself at the end of chapter 4 (something that took hours last time) getting ready to defend a ship from oncoming soldiers. I also had just learned the fireball spell. The fireball spell is a delightful little thing in that you can actually guide it after you fire it. I stood on the deck of that ship and rained down fireball after fireball upon the guards that were foolish enough to run at me.

Have you ever been doing something and then suddenly realized that you had a grin on your face? Mine went from ear to ear.

Upon starting into Chapter 5 (where you start facing the orcs), I got the lightning spell (orcs are weak to lightning). I had previously found orcs to be semi-annoying/tough... not anymore! I ran from roof top to roof top of those temple steps throwing balls of lightning at everything that moved. I felt like Zeus punishing the Greeks for their lack of piety. I'm also pretty sure I cast the spell three or four times after everything was dead.

I completely finished Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 in that one sitting. All creatures perished before me. None were safe from my firey, lightningy wrath: ghouls, zombies, spiders, goblins, orcs, a cyclops... none of it mattered. I was halfway through Chapter 6 before I even died for the first time (stupid ghouls aren't weak to lightning OR fire).

I must admit, after struggling through the difficult combat in my first play through, this one has been ridiculously fulfilling. I'll probably sit down and finish the game (I'm guessing only one more sitting). I'm predicting brutal efficiency, maniacal grins, and heaping helping of diabolical laughter.

Doggies and Spiders and Worms, Oh My!

I finished Penumbra: Overture last night, and the episodic nature of the games became readily apparent when the game ended on a very serious cliff hanger. I decided that instead of providing final thoughts for this and each of the other two episodes, I would wait until I finish all three. In the mean time, I'm going to share some of my experiences with this first episode.

Penumbra does a great job of providing tension in ways I've never seen in a game before. While I feel that the zombie dogs fell short in that regard (more on that in my final thoughts), the spiders in the game were awesome.

In the early stages of the game, I found myself crawling through some webbed tunnels and finding numerous notes left by a previous occupant. They detailed his experiences living with the spiders. While he feared them at first, he eventually started eating them (which eventually poisoned his tongue and he had to cut it out!). He also chronicles how the spiders slowly started getting bigger up until the point they couldn't fit through the cracks in the tunnels. The whole time I was in those tunnels, I was a little on edge, constantly expecting them to jump out at me. When I did experience them, they provided a great little scare.

I had just climbed up into a new tunnel. I started down the cave and saw some HUGE eggs on my left side. The next thing I knew, spiders were pouring out of them and swarming me. After a quick reload, I ran past them into the next chamber, turned and rolled a rock in front of the whole, only to realize I had opened up ANOTHER spider nest. I ran from that chamber and quickly lit some spilled paraffin that was on the ground. I gleefully watched the trailing spiders burn. From there, I moved a boulder out of the way and started down a pretty steep downward incline. The rumbling behind me (gotta love surround sound) signaled the oncoming boulder. I rushed down to the end of the corridor and made a quick right turn... and of course found myself face to face with ANOTHER spider nest. One quick girlish shriek later, I was desperately running in the other direction frantically swinging my pick axe at a cave in trying to get away. It was a superb moment of game play filled with a constant, very palpable tension.

The other creatures I encountered were rock worms. VERY large rock worms.

In my first encounter with them, I had walked into a new area, crossed a wooden bridge and tried to open a door. I had no sooner taken my cursor hand off the door than a large pounding started on the other side. I was close enough to the door that I didn't even see what came through and killed me. I quickly reloaded, repeated the previous steps, and then ran back away from the door. The worm that came through was so massive and nasty looking, I literally just stood there, frozen, as it killed me.

Later on, the game had a great chase moment where you frantically run from another (the same?) worm, hopping over acid pits, bashing through boards, and closing doors behind you... only to find the crank that opens the final door is working WAY too slowly. As I sat there frantically spinning my mouse trying to get that door to open (remember the fun physics system at work here), my heart was practically pounding out of my chest. It took me two more playthroughs in that section to finally calm down enough to realize I could collapse the chamber behind me.

Creepy crawlies aside, the first episode finished pretty strong. There was a great moment of flipping on a light switch (turned out it was a black light and it showed some... hidden... things) and I also discovered the shocking history of my "friend" I had been communicating with via a radio. The final fate of said friend (don't want to ruin anything) was also something absolutely crazy.

I'll leave my final impressions until I finish all three games/episodes, but so far, I am thinking that it was $5 VERY well spent.

Penumbra: Overture - First Impressions

My most recent video game purchase was the Penumbra series (Overture, Black Plague, and Requiem) on Steam for the tidy price of $5. I had heard relatively little about the series, only having a basic idea of what it was about, but for $5 I figured I couldn't go wrong. What I ended up with is a delightful little first person action adventure horror game (that's a lot of adjectives).

Penumbra begins with your character, Philip, on a boat for Greenland to investigate some of the mystery concerning your father (I don't think I was paying attention carefully enough here as I've already forgotten the exact details). I quickly found myself inside an "abandoned" mine of some kind.

I was immediately impressed by the interface. While it has traditional WASD first person shooter controls, the majority of interaction is actually done with a little hand cursor. It instantly reminded me of countless adventure games I've played. You can either directly enter interaction mode in which the mouse controls your cursor rather than your looking direction, or use the mouse to look around which moves your center point (I turned on a cross hair) over stuff until the cursor appears. Again, in classic adventure game style, the right mouse button performs a "look" and provides more information (often witty and sarcastic) about whatever your cursor is over while the left mouse button picks things up. The place the game really shines, however, is in its physical interactions.

Penumbra has a pretty decent physics system and forces you to use it to interact with the environment. To open a door, for example, you click on the door and drag the mouse until the door opens... the same goes for opening drawers and chests, even for flipping switches or turning cranks. It works surprisingly well and adds a nice level of immersion to the equation.

It also features another adventure game staple: combining inventory items. In one area, I had to find some string, combine it with a coating of some kind I had picked up, then dip it into some black powder I had found by breaking open a barrel. All to make a wick which I eventually stuck into a barrel of TNT and used to blow open the way to the next part of the game.

While combat exists in Penumbra, so far the game has more or less discouraged it. I've yet to find any enemy except for some zombie-like dogs. So far, it has been rather easy to either avoid them outright or lure them away using the plethora of stale beef jerky I've been finding. The few I have fought have been in melee combat with a pickaxe I found. Instead of just pushing the button to equip your axe and then clicking to swing it, the game actually forces you to swing your mouse back and forth (or up and down) to swing the pick. It adds a bit of difficulty to the attacks, but again, also adds some immersion.

So far, I must admit I'm relatively impressed. The puzzles have been pretty interesting without being impossible (I really liked the one where I had to listen to a Morse code message being played over the radio and then figure out the numbers involved which became the pass code for a gate) and the setting is reasonably creepy. My only big problem has been some graphical issues (see my screenshot) which seem to be limited to ATI cards... however the problem isn't constant and usually goes away if I restart the game. I'm anxious to see where the game goes (a friend of mine promised me a "wow" moment) and will be updating you all as I continue to play.

Dark Messiah - Final Thoughts

Here are my final thoughts for Dark Messiah of Might and Magic:

What I liked:

• Combat. It was generally quite interesting and varied, despite being either easy or difficult most of the time. There were nearly always a lot of ways to kill a group of guys, whether it was hand to hand, bow/magic, kicking them off something, kicking them into something, bringing a trap of some kind down on them, or throwing rocks at their heads. While some things were more effective than others (hay bales FTW!), you always had options.
• Rope arrows. I mentioned these previously, but can't help but bring them up again. They were a great gameplay mechanic and were the cause of some really interesting solutions to puzzles and problems. I only wish they had been used a little bit more... I think they could have done all kinds clever and interesting things with them.
• Overall design. The levels were relatively varied, the enemies were semi-interesting and the locations where logical and fun. There wasn't really anything that stood out as being overly amazing here, but generally speaking ,it was good.
• Secret areas. I don't know that I could tell you why, but it always made me happy when the little "You've found a secret area!" message would pop up on the screen... even if I often found them accidentally thinking I was just going the way I was supposed to.
• Price. $6 on GoGamer.com (including shipping). Can't go wrong there.
  

What I didn't like:

• Inconsistent difficulty. Early on, this game was REALLY hard. I think that is partly due to learning how to fight properly and partly due to the fact that my weapons were so underpowered. In Chapter 7, however, when I found the lightning shield, the game was ridiculously easy... to the point that I didn't even have to try. And finally, in the Epilogue, the game adjusted to the point where I felt like I was neither godlike nor completely feeble. It's much more entertaining to be eased into combat while ramping up difficulty (and weapons/stats) as the game progresses. This game just didn't do it very well at all.
• Skill point system. This game rewards skill points as you complete quest... while there is not necessarily anything wrong with that, it's a system I've just never really liked (although Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines did that and it is still one of my all-time favorite games). My biggest complaint with such a system is that is doesn't reward me for killing everything or exploring everywhere... something an experience with level-up system does. Although I will admit that this system makes a pure stealth, kill-as-little-as-possible approach much more feasible.
• Magic. I didn't go too far down the magic skill tree, but there just didn't appear to be much down there to get excited about. Perhaps I'm underestimating it, but I basically only used my magic heal throughout the entire game.
• Demonic powers. The game forces you to use these for a segment of gameplay lasting about 5 minutes. I found them to be useful during those 5 minutes and then never again.
  
• Loot/Inventory. The game had a fixed inventory size, but it just really didn't need one... it was quite possible to carry one of every type of ring, staff, sword, bow, and dagger in your inventory at once. Furthermore, I've never been a huge fan of RPGs with a super fixed loot table... as in I go to point x and get item y where x and y are constant. It was especially bad here as I would find a second (or third) copy of a specific item and when picking up the second one, it would just disappear in my inventory over the first... making me feel more like I had earned a skill rather than found an item.

Closing thoughts:

While this game certainly had its fair share of faults, it was definitely entertaining. If you enjoy action-RPGs (Oblivion style), you'll enjoy Dark Messiah. Don't expect a deep, exploration filled experience... just sit back and enjoy the ride.

Hard to easy in a single Lightning Shield

Final installment in my Dark Messiah of Might and Magic playthrough:

When I left off last time, I had just finished Chapter 5. Chapter 6 was a jaunt through a tomb trying to obtain the Crystal Skull Skull of Shadows. The most interesting thing in here was a slew of really slow moving zombies. They were relatively easy to deal with, due to their slow moving nature, but they had one very annoying ability: a poison spray. Poison is definitely something I think DM did wrong... basically when you get poisoned, you slowly lose hit points until you get down to 5. While you can use an antidote to remove it, if you are fighting batches of mobs that can all poison you (it wasn't uncommon to have 10+ zombie packs), it quickly becomes pretty pointless. I basically played all of Chapter 6 at 5 health because it was just a waste of time to keep healing myself and keep getting poisoned.

Chapter 6 ended with "the big reveal" where you wake up from what seemed like certain death to find all your gear gone and that you now have some demonic powers. While it was pretty obvious that the developers intended you to use these demonic powers quite extensively, I found them useful for the 5 minutes it took me to get from where I woke up to where I got my gear back. Perhaps I underestimated their usefulness, but I REALLY don't think I did... they are only usable at melee range, you take damage while using them (refillable by killing mobs), and you don't seem to have any good blocking abilities. I dubbed them a waste of my time and moved on.

Chapter 7 was my escape from the temple and island, and was a relatively uneventful run through goblins and orcs. I did, however, happen to find one piece of new gear in a deep pool of water: the Lightning Shield.

Remember how I was complaining about the combat being ridiculously difficult? The Lightning Shield makes the combat easier... game-breakingly easier. Basically, if you have a shield equipped, you can use the right mouse button to pull it up and block. It blocks every attack. The normal shields are balanced by the fact that they have a set durability... they take took much damage and they break. If the Lightning Shield was only unbreakable, it would have been an amazing shield... but no, any enemy that attacks while you are blocking take lightning damage which temporarily stuns them. This shield made fighting so easy it almost stopped being fun. New combat steps:

1) Find enemies

2) Block

3) Kill them or disarm them with a single power swing while laughing at how stupid they are for attacking a shield with a lightning aura

4) Finish them off if necessary

5) Repeat

With my lightning shield in hand, I entered Chapter 8: a trip into the necromancer stronghold. This area introduced what was supposed to be a rather difficult new melee enemy, which turned out to be trivially easy due to my new shield. At the end of the area, I found out that the sexy niece, Leanna, was not actually dead! (I don't think there is a scale in all the world that could measure my level of unsurprise.) I was then given the first "moral" choice in the game... save her or not. I decided to save her as I figured that doing so would probably grant skill points (it did). I then fought a relatively easy spider boss, found the journal I was looking for (the VERY large book on a pedestal label "Arantir's Journal") and escaped.

Chapter 9 was my trip through town to get to the necropolis where Arantir (the evil necromancer) was apparently wreaking some sort of havoc or something. At this point, the designers seemed to have realized that combat was probably getting easy so they started throwing ridiculously large numbers of everything at me. Right off the bat I found myself fighting numerous ghouls simultaneously. This continued throughout this rest relatively short chapter. The only thing of particular note was the other "moral" choice I could make here... I could either cleanse myself of the demon taint that I had (those worthless demon powers I mentioned) or not. Cleansing myself also granted me access to all the most powerful weapons in the game. Even though those powers were VERY amazing, I chose the cleansing route. The new weapons were quite awesome. Coupled with my game breaking shield, I made short work of the rest of the chapter.

The final chapter was the Epilogue... even though it was a full chapter in and of itself. This had me fighting through the necropolis (more undead made trivial by my lightning shield and blessed sword) to get to Arantir. I did pull out my new blessed bow and use it a fair amount in here (I had raised my bow skill when I ran out of things to spend skill points on) and it was actually quite devastating... almost enough to make me want to try to play the game through entirely as a ranged character.

Anyway, the final battle with Arantir was pretty easy. I fought him for a bit, then he summoned a bone dragon (hooray for my blessed bow!), then I fought him, then he resummoned the dragon, and so forth. Afterward, the final "moral" choice to either free the bad guy or stop him (both of which you can do regardless of your previous decisions). I dropped a save point and tried both... they were equally disappointing.

My next post will be a full set of what I liked/didn't liked items, but I'll give you a small taste now: was this a great game? No... it wasn't. Was it entertaining and worth playing? Definitely.

All arrows should be rope arrows

And now, part 3 of my Dark Messiah of Might and Magic playthrough:

I want to take a break from my playthrough to talk about some of the things DM does well.

First off: rope arrows. The game has rope arrows. The game doesn't really need rope arrows. In all honesty, rope arrows add very little to the actual game play. That being said, there is something really fun about them. The basic idea is that you are shooting an arrow with a rope attached to it. If it sticks in something wood, it will drop a rope straight down from where it hit. You can then climb the rope to get to new and more interesting places. Most of the time it's pretty obvious; you get to the end of a corridor, look up and see a beam you can shoot a rope arrow into. Other times, it's merely a way to get above your enemies and easily go around them.

There are some great things you can do with them though. For example: back in Chapter 5, there's a section where you're out along some cliffs where the researchers there have built these house hanging out over the water. In one place, you drop down through the roof of one, and as you do, it starts to crumble and then the bottom breaks and you fall with it. I could clearly see that there was something in the room that I wanted... I was pretty sure it was some kind of armor. I made half a dozen attempts to run out there and then grab the armor, then jump onto a rope, but the floor just fell way too fast. I then proceeded to spend the next 10 minutes or so across another half dozen attempts setting up this system of ropes that lead all around the outside of the building and finally got me right outside the window where the armor was (the ropes don't swing; they function more like a pole). It was ridiculously clever and I couldn't help but pat myself on the back as I made my way back to the ledge.

As soon as I got back, I walked back into the building and instantly realized I could have just used my telekinesis spell to grab the armor. Yup. Clever to idiot in less than 10 seconds.

The other thing I've been quite impressed with in the game is the actual variety of combat. While I found it practically a necessity to throw things at any and all enemies early on in the game, that stopped being quite as important as I progressed in the game (mostly thanks to the Lightning Shield... but that's a topic for my next post). The game tends to give you lots of ways to kill things: melee combat, arrows (these get better later in the game), magic, and all kinds of environmental obstacles. One of the best ways to kill enemies is to lure them close to a ledge or close to some wall spikes (which seem to be everywhere) and send them flying with a well placed kick. It definitely breaks the tedium of regular combat and is quite fulfilling.

Another example: at some point in Chapter 6, I found myself setup to fight 5 or 6 (I can't remember which) ghouls. If you recall from my last post, 2 of them had previously done an exceptionally fine job of handing me my ass. Despite some ledges to kick them off and some spikes to lure them into, I couldn't seem to manage to kill them all. I then remembered seeing in hints in one of the loading screens (remember I was dying a lot) that staves were good against groups of enemies. I decided to pull out my fire staff and then very quickly made short work of them as the staff stunned them and let me stab, impale or otherwise send them flying into oblivion. While I can't say I used the staff much afterwards, it was quite nice to actually see some variety.

Well, that's all for this time. I know I promised some info about the cyclops (it was a long and relatively boring fight) and some screenshots (next time I promise!) but that's all you are getting. I did just finish the game, so expect two more posts: my experiences playing through the last part of the game, and my overall impressions.

Orcs: The other white...err red humanoids

Continuing my playthrough of Dark Messiah of Might and Magic:

Last time, I had just finished Chapter 4 and had left for an island of some kind. I was tasked by the sexy niece of a recently departed wizard (he died in front of me...end of Chapter 2, I think) to enter some kind of temple and find a skull or something. Upon arriving at the island, I discovered that orcs had taken over the temple (along with some goblins). My first task was to clear out the orcs on the temple steps. I quickly realized two things:

1) These guys were VERY similar to the humans I had previously been fighting (with both sword/shield and archer types)
2) They hit harder and had more HP

That's right: the very minute I start to not feel pathetic against the things I'm fighting, the game ratchets up the difficulty while keeping me fighting basically the same sort of enemy.

(Note for all game designers: DON'T MAKE GAMERS FEEL FEEBLE AND PATHETIC!)

Of course, I already had the techniques down: throw rocks and barrels until they fall down. Then stab them. A lot.

After clearing out the courtyard and running away from a dragon-like thing, I finally found myself in the temple. The inside was your basic setup of traps and various goblins and orcs.

After a while, I found myself facing the chief orc. He informed me that we were going to fight honorably, i.e., "no wizard tricks," and that if I won I could go free. The fight started immediately with his four followers watching us. Five or six deaths later I had both learned to avoid using magical healing (a "wizard trick") and that he could two-shot me if I didn't block properly. It was pretty easy to figure out the winning strategy: throw a rock at his face then stab him when he was on the ground.

Let me diverge once here: it seriously irks me when designers artificially create difficulty levels in their games. There are so many good way to make a game harder or easier, but so very often they fall upon the old stand by: simply make mobs hit harder and have more hit points. This game is SO bad at that; it is quite honestly distracting from the immersion. It just shouldn't take such a large number of sword swings to kill an orc with a flaming sword whilst he can kill me in two to three well-placed blows. I can think of only one other game that has ever been this terrible: The Suffering.

(An example from that game: on the hardest difficulty level -- again, it was called Insane, so I should have known better -- it took eight point-blank shots with a shotgun to kill the lowest level melee character in that game. I counted. EIGHT. We aren't talking super shotguns here, that reloaded super fast and had 100 round magazines... no, you'd often end up reloading just to finish off a single mob. And the game would usually send multiple mobs at you simultaneously. In the final section of the game, you run down a road trying to get to some docks with enemies just popping up everywhere... the mobs had such a ridiculous amount of hit points that I literally just sprinted down the road as fast as I could, killing nothing. It was neither possible nor worth my time.)

Anyway, DM of M and M definitely suffers similarly here. I will freely admit that I am not playing on the difficulty it was probably tuned for, but if you can't tune the game for all your difficulty levels, don't put them in. (For an example of good difficulty increases, play Crysis on "Delta" where they remove the crosshair and make the enemies speak Korean instead of English).

With the chief orc bested (with five usually-fatal "stab a guy on the floor" blows), I went back to the sexy wizard niece. She proceeded to open the gate we had been standing in front of and I proceeded to be insta-gibbed by the two ghouls. They possessed no swords, no shields, but they did have the ability to two-shot me (first shot reducing me from 60 hit points down to 9). 10-20 attempts later, the ghouls were dead (more rocks and barrels), the sexy niece opened the gate, was trapped on the wrong side and was promptly killed by the necromancer hot on my tail. I ran down the hall way and found myself in Chapter 6.

Next time: Chapter 6+, rope arrows, magic items, cyclopes and hopefully I'll finally get some screenshots.

The hay bale is mightier than the sword

Yesterday, I began in earnest my play through of Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Yes, I know this game is like three years old, but I just bought from one of GoGamer.com's 48 madness sales for about $6. For those of you not familiar with the game, it's built using Valve's source engine of Half Life 2 fame.

After reading around and asking a friend, I decided that I wanted to play through as a mostly melee class with a little bit of support magic. After some cutscenes and an intro chapter or two in which you don't really fight anything, I finally got to some real action in chapter 2.

My first impression: this game is hard.

Now, let's be clear: I'm no slouch when it comes to video games, and I'm quite good at shooters, but this game is rough. It had three difficulty levels, Normal, Hard, and Insane/Difficulty/Don't play here... I'm pretty sure I picked the middle one (which in all fairness is called Hard, so maybe it makes sense).

You start the second chapter being awoken by a servant who informs you of an attack. A lone guard comes up the stairs; he is wearing full armor and has a shield and sword. This first fight didn't seem to cause me too much grief, although I did take quite a bit of damage. From there, you go down the stairs and out the door... that's where the craziness began.

Here, it threw me against a archer and three more of those melee soldiers. I literally replayed this section over a dozen times. The enemies constantly block your attacks and manage to get in plenty of their own (each of which deal at least a 1/4 to a 1/3 of your total life). If you do manage to land blows, it can take 4-5 full power swings to kill something.

As I continued to play through this section and the next, it READILY became apparent that I failed at fighting. I even pulled out my bow (which was RIDICULOUSLY underpowered) and my one spell (fire arrow) which was similarly pathetic. In the tutorial, the game taught me how to kick enemies to knock them off guard, kick them into fires, etc. Also, that I could pick up stuff and throw it at them as well. As it turns out, these are not helper abilities, but REQUIRED abilities.

Example: in chapter 3 (4?) I "infiltrated" a warehouse and found myself fighting an archer and a swordsman I'd already maimed. Upon killing the swordsman, two more swordsmen would spawn and join the fight. At some point, an archer ran in from the roof on the other side of the square and started shooting. Cue another 10-20 attempts. I FINALLY passed this section by figuring out the spawn order of the guys (kill the archer THEN the limping swordsman) and decided to enter the warehouse.

At this point, I'm sort of fed up with the ridiculousness, so after running into the warehouse, I pickup a bale of hay and throw it at the first guy I see. I then proceed, for the next minute or so, to repeatedly throw this same bale of hay at EVERYONE that appeared. When the dust settled I was surrounded by 5+ swordsman/archers and was standing next to my apparently lead-filled hay bale. I had now learned to let the rocks/barrels/hay bales do the fighting for me.

As I proceeded through the rest of this section, up until I left on the ship for an island (and quite honestly there as well), I would repeat the same basic process:

1) Find guys
2) Run around with my shield up until I found something to throw at them
3) Throw it at them and knock them down
4) Stab them while they were down
5) Find more things and throw them
6) Repeat

At the end of this section (Chapter 4, I think), I had gotten a new sword, I had leveled up my abilities a bit, and I actually got to a point where I felt like I was doing real damage to these guards. Of course shortly after that I started fighting orcs... but I'll save that one for my next post.

Memoir

I've long thought of starting a journal of some kind, but I realized that my life isn't very interesting, to me or really anyone else. The only thing I really do that is worth talking about is play games. I'm always looking for someone to tell about my latest playthrough, and while my wife listens (or at least pretends to), I generally find myself craving people who actually enjoy playing too. I'm hoping to log all of my play time experiences here involving at least one update every two days. Please feel free to comment and even suggest future games.

First up: my time in Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.