So I guess it’s been a while since the last state of the union adress on here. Well, as of late we commiserated the anniversary of my appearance into this space called living. Or something. We, us and a gang went to the Red Oak pub where we dined upon succulent foods and imbibed a selection of tasty beers brewed by the proprietors. Very great place, mucheo recommendation for a dinnerial night out. From thence a subsection of the aforementioned attendees (myself included, natch) headed on down to the James Squires pub for more tasty brews. Foos ball was played (I won) and some dodgy arcade racer was played.. we all lost. An enjoyable night out.
On the gaming front, as I’m sure you’re all desperately interested, there have been several new developments. I believe I mentioned Chrono Trigger DS earlier, and as you can see in the side bar I’m still going on with it when the mood takes me. It’s just as excellent as it ever was, though shows some age in that some quests must be pursued with some trial/error.. or a FAQ if you’re that way inclined. There have been some minor changes to spell names in the port that are sure to upset the purists, but the game is unchanged… except for some odd Lost Sanctum thing that appears to have been tacked on. I’m not sure what it’s all about.. I may ignore it. Mostly though, it’s a high quality port of what many many people will tell you is the best 16-bit (SNES era, for you non gamers) RPG.. and what many people regard as one of the best RPGs ever made. Certainly it’s a very accessible one.. I’m not the biggest RPG fan in many ways, as I hate grinding for levels and random encounters.. but CT has not these things. Also, once you’ve beaten the end guy you can begin a New Game +. This begins the game with all the characters at the level they were when you finished it before.. so you can breeze through the game again, or attempt to tackle the end guy at an earlier point in the plot, hence seeing one of the many different endings. Given the game is all about time travel, the endings are varied and plentiful. There is much replay value to this game.
On the PC front, I have been playing Dawn of War 2 co-op with a certain entrance sealing device. It’s a very streamlined strategy game – there’s no bases, no resource gathering and no unit creation. What you have is a gang of squad commanders or solo units that will level up and attain armour, weapons, items and skills to be utelised through the levels. You tell them where to do, they find cover and blow things up. For the units with squads, you can capture points that will recover lost squaddies and will replenish all units’ health. In co-op you share the units rather than have two of each, which means you can take more a granular approach and make more use of tactics and abilities. We’ve been chit chatting over skype while playing which makes the co-ordination of things much easier, though nowadays voice comms whilst co-op multiplaying is pretty much a given – most games will have in game comms functionality. Skype just gives better quality voice whilst being independant of the game. Anyhoo, it’s a lot of fun… a hybrid of an RTS and an RPG that gives the best of both worlds with very few drawbacks… though I still hate level caps in games. Check it out.
Next time on the ‘bun, Red Alert 3.. and we play ‘what’s that smell?!’ If you can guess what noisome odour I’m thinking of, you win something off my desk.. will be a dead hard drive, or maybe an old receipt?!
Oak trees do not have acorns until they are at least 50 years old.
Some sort of mid-life crisis maybe?