Pet Fish

Last month, I started playing a massively multiplayer online game. No, I'm not talking about WoW. I'm talking about Ikariam, which is a free browser game.

I've heard it compared to Utopia, or (offline) Civ or Sim City. I wouldn't really know, since I didn't play any of those. Ikariam is, to wit: a city-building resource management game, with some pretense at having some combat. It's technically real time, but most people wouldn't recognize it as such since it's so slooow in execution.

In any case, Ikariam is pretty fun for what it is. Making your town expand is reasonably fun, and it has a better interface than I expected. The real failing is that military adventures are pretty useless. On one hand, this is a good thing in an introductory mmo-town game, since I was able to learn comfortably, at my own pace. On the other hand, it might as well be a single player game. I guess some people like that though! Overall, it can be a bit boring, but still less boring than work so that's alright.

Just last week, I joined Travian (speed server), which is pretty much like Ikariam. However, I was promised faster gameplay and more combat. Well... it delivers!

The gameplay is fast, particularly on the first day. You have to note that after a month of Ikariam, you're kind of used to playing for 10 minuites, twice a day. In contrast, the first three hours of Travian are continuous. This is (probably) not something you want do at work.

Combat is also relatively prominent. Attacks come in often, and it can be discouraging to see three hours worth of production taken away by a handful of units. On the other hand, there are ways to just turtle in and weather attacks (Cranny rulez!). This is made more interesting by the fact that there are three races to choose from (Romans, Gauls, and Teutons), and each has their own relatively unique tech tree. Of course, at this point I'm not really qualified to comment on combat since I'm just starting to build my own army. Overall, I'm enjoying this.

Flashback: Gamecrab weekends

June, 2008:

I saw Gamecrab's site while reading a local gaming forum, and I convinced Pat to check it out one sunday afternoon. It's a boardgame cafe! That means that it's a place where you can come in, sit down, and rent a boardgame for 40 Php/hour. Part of the service is having a GM give you a quick run through of the game rules.

They have a reasonably large number of games: Elegant Eurogames like Carcassone, Blue Moon, and Puerto Rico, Light party games like Taboo and Apples to Apples, and complicated Ameritrash like Betrayal at the House on the Hill, Descent, and WoW. Oh, and Monopoly too, I guess.

A couple of free game days later, I was able to convince a bunch of people from the Mafiagang to play there too. It's pretty fun to try out all the games, though it can get expensive over time. Fun enough to start buying our own boardgames, at least... but that's another story.

Not in the cards

I really wanted to play in the Morningtide prerelease, but apparently NG had already ran out of tickets when I passed by the day before. I didn't know that such a thing could happen, and even if I did I wouldn't have expected it this set (which seemed to be relatively low-key).


Afterwards I found that the prerelease pool was all Morningtide, no Lorwyn. I'm guessing NG's supply of Lorwyn is still tight, so they scaled back the prerelease. Unfortunate, since I would have been interested in 6 Morningtide boosters... well, I'll have to make do with a booster box and a fat pack.

On the other hand, it was a pretty restful weekend. I watched Sweeny Todd (it was ok) and spent time with friends and family. I slept a lot too, which is very important. Hm, maybe I should just bug Pat to play a Lorwyn (pauper) league.

Bleach Fighting Game

...for the DS!

Since I started WoW, I haven't been so interested in playing RPGs on the DS. So I decided to see what games I could get in other genres. Bleach: Blade of Fate is a fighting game, similar to Street Fighter or perhaps Samurai Showdown. I had been complaining about a lack of fighting games on the DS, and I'm particularly happy because Bleach is good enough to fill that gap.


Bleach has some pretty deep gameplay: you have the expected combos, juggles, special attacks, and an energy bar for super attacks. You also have another energy bar that you can use to either "flash step" or power up an attack. And then you have powerup cards that can be used to give various buffs and so on. Not to mention a 4-player mode and a multitude of playable characters.

Apart from the fighting itself, Bleach has a good spread of fluff and gimmicks. The story mode is broken up into several missions that tell the story of the Soul Society arc. There's also a shop mode for unlocking things like more powerful cards or bonus graphics.


Overall: It's no Tekken, and the DS limits the graphics, but this is still a very respectable game. Highly recommended!

Also playing: Mario Party, Honeycomb Beat, Ultimate Mortal Kombat

Happy Winterveil

I've been busy with work this last month, but fortunately, HP has a traditional shutdown over the holidays so I was able to take almost two weeks off. Pat took a break too, and we decided to spend most of it playing WoW.

We ran all over Kalimdor, from the forests of Ashenvale to the salt flats of the Thousand Needles. We ran through terrifying dungeons, with help from Manchester. We even visited the eastern continent, to the green hills of Stranglethorn Vale (where we were killed - repeatedly - by despicable Alliance players).

Man, that was a good week.

Foluzaar, level 38 Shaman

Now Loading...

I would have wanted to write something detailing how much I am enjoying WoW.

Unfortunately, I have already spent all of my free time playing WoW.

Exploran

Last weekend was good for gaming. I spent most of Saturday finishing up Zelda: Phantom Hourglass on the DS. It's a lot simpler than I recall Ocarina of Time being, but it's still amazingly fun to explore each new town and dungeon, to get each new tool and figure out what you can do with them. Zelda is a game filled to the brim with "Wow!" and "Ah-ha!" moments, and I really have to love it for that.



Note to self: I should set up an emulator for N64 and play some OOT.

****

On Sunday, I went ahead and bought World of Warcraft. Pat and I had previously played trial accounts; WoW is superior to any other MMO that we've tried, and we decided it would be worth paying the full price.

I got the WoW Battle Chest, which had an installer for the base game, another for the Burning Crusade expansion, and neat glossy illustrated guides for each. Plus smaller B&W manuals for each. Bought it at Data Blitz; it was significantly pricier than the MSRP would have led me to expect. But for some reason there aren't many stores that sell original software! Huh.



Mmm, time for some GRINDAN.

Serious Magics!

Lorwyn released last month, and I've been playing a lot of Tournament Sealed (which is to say, every other weekend). I've been getting solid results so far: 3-1 in the prerelease, 4-3 in a GPT and 5-2 in a PTQ. However, sealed deck (where you play with fresh, unopened packs) is expensive if you weren't actively looking to buy packs to start with.

Of course, I was trying to gather packs; I also put together a Casual Limited set, meaning four of each common and two of each uncommon, shuffled up and repacked into 40 boosters. Now that I'm done collecting, I might just go play Constructed instead.




I mentioned a while ago that I was playing FF: Chocobo Tales. Now, the nice thing about playing a Final Fantasy game is that they can reuse the good, nostalgic music from their previous games... and Chocobo Tales reuses old music shamelessly. This is a positive thing overall; this is good music.

The net effect being that as I finished the game, I had the nagging urge to play some the good parts for myself. On the piano! A bit of digging around revealed some sheet music here. Initially was leaning towards the boss music, but I eventually settled on the slower 600AD song from Chrono Trigger, with much better results.

Kurikinton Fox, The Decisive Battle (FF6)

Chocobo Tales

I don't know if I even mentioned that I already got a DS a few months ago. Poor blog, I have been ignoring you cruelly. I'm very very happy with what I got, a snappy portable that I can fit into my pocket, that I can play all sorts of games on. The DS has a wide enough selection of games that I can pick the ones that tickle most my fancy.

Yes, in case you didn't get it, I'm telling you to buy one. Go! Buy one! Yes! I'll wait here!


*Ahem* In any case, one of the games that I've been playing recently is Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales. It's pretty good! It's like your usual FF, except the "battles" are either in the form of minigames or a collectible card game. At first, I wasn't impressed by the idea of a minigame RPG the first time I heard of it. Then I played it and I was impressed. Graphics are quite good too.


The minigames can be a bit frustrating here and there, mostly because I have generally poor hand-eye coordination (too many books and not enough vidyagames when I was a kid, heh). If a particularly difficult minigame was in the way of the story, I'd have to bang my head against the wall until I could solve it and allow the RPG to continue. It's a bit stunning to realize that the average ten-year old is probably better than me at this kind of thing. Despite the difficulty issue though, this game is (surprisingly) a must play.