Springtime for El Spite...ler
07 February 10 | 22:07 | Posted by:
With the Japanese release of
Etrian Odyssey III edging up (along with the presumed U.S. release, because dur hur
of course), I'm making another concerted effort to finish the second game. I always seem to get to the end of a stratum, die horribly at the boss, and find my attention whisked away by some other game that I actually have to play for work before I can level up and tweak my specs enough to win.
Yesterday, I managed to complete the third stratum with a nail-bitingly desperate victory that burned through all my expendables and ended with a single character standing, her health in the red. (And I probably wouldn't have made it that far if not for the fact that the boss wasted about half a dozen turns trying to use its one completely ineffectual attack over and over again.) It's a pretty good instance of the tension and challenge that I love so much about the game... and the fact that I'll be able to return and crush this same boss with little effort before I've bested the spring-like fourth stratum is doubly great. And so, guild El Spite presses on toward the end.
category: games | forums |
thirteen comments |
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The legend of chocolate continues
06 February 10 | 17:13 | Posted by:
Hey, look, it's another entry in the Kit-Kat Densetsu series.
category: blog | forums |
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GSQ3: Writing S-says
06 February 10 | 10:38 | Posted by:
So, the takeaway from my work in podcasting this week appears to be that I'm a horrible person whose voice should never be heard aloud. Don't worry, though: All future episodes of Retronauts will be conducted entirely in semaphore.
- Sabreman (Jake Alley): You want to know how to make an English major happy? Refer to the style of writing in this article as "old English." They love it when you do that.
- The Safari Hunter (Justin Fairchild): Apparently the hero of Congo Bongo doesn't have a proper name, leastways not so far as it's actually given to us in the lore. I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that The Safari Hunter's real name is "Nario," though. Or maybe "Muigi."
- Samson (Mike Zeller): Not to be mistaken for the real Samson. You can tell the difference because this one has short hair.
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Shiren call
05 February 10 | 20:32 | Posted by:
Another day, another failed pun in the blog title. This one would work if "Shiren" were pronounced the way my coworker Justin pronounces it --
shy-rin -- but every time he does that my ears explode in agony. Which means that I'm inflicting pain on myself with this one. I guess. I dunno, I just work here.
I mention
Shiren the Wanderer because I'd noted before my intention to record a roguelike-themed episode of Active-Time Babble next week to mark the launch of Shiren on Wii. Our ATB plan still stands, but David talked me into appearing today's episode of
4 Guys (I agreed mainly to redeem my dreadfully awful work on
yesterday's Retronauts), and I ended up going into a fair amount of detail on both the genre (which I imagine is well outside the purview of this particular show's primary audience) and on Shiren in particular.
I'd like to take a moment to note that I played a fair amount of Shiren today and my criticism of the game in the show -- about it possibly being a bit too unchallenging -- has been washed away. I still haven't seen a game over screen, but once I made it into the Karakuri Mansion, the game upped the stakes. A good roguelike isn't necessarily one that kills you a lot, it's one that keeps you stressed out and anxious with every step, and Shiren definitely works in that regard. I've found myself measuring each action carefully and constantly riding the ragged edge of loss as the monsters take my hit points down to 1 or 2 and I take a desperate last swipe in the hopes that my killing blow will be the first to connect. Shiren's structure had me worried at first, but no: This is no
Pokémon Mystery Dungeon. Chun Soft is playing for keeps.
Of course, the real star of the episode is Ray, making his debut on the show and showing the rest of us up. These days, I'm pretty much just marking time until he takes over my job.
category: blog | forums |
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GSQ3: Samus it ever was
04 February 10 | 21:09 | Posted by:
I'm pretty sure I've used the joke "Samus it ever was" before, but do you know what?
I don't care. It's just that good.
I'm sorry to say that this update includes my very worst entry of all from
GameSpite Quarterly 3, the piece on Shadax. I probably should have just cut it, because it's not good and it doesn't actually make sense. To even begin to understand it, you have to be familiar with the image above, wherein Shadax resembled a buffed-up rock 'n roll roadie. I went from there, but sadly it was all downhill. Anyway, everyone else picked up my slack, so it's all good.
We are (Angband) Borg
03 February 10 | 21:00 | Posted by:
I guess that last post deserves a little context.
Angband is a PC roguelike, and a pretty detailed one at that. As you can probably suss from the name, it's built around the lore of Tolkien. Sure, most fantasy is, but Angband is courteous enough not to maintain any pretenses about its inspiration. It's an adventure into a Middle-Earth dungeon, and you fight orcs and Gollum and so on and so forth. I appreciate that kind of honesty in my games.
Angband Borg is a program that sends an AI-controlled player into the dungeon to see how far it can advance; since computers are infinitely patient, the Borg tends to be very conservative and advances very slowly. But advance it does! My Borg -- in the form of the Angband Borg screensaver for OS X which runs on my email computer at work during office hours -- has managed to reach level 37 and floor 37 since setting out, I dunno, sometime in October, I guess? It's a slow, steady adventure, and sometimes I spend a day watching it kill infinitely respawning lice for negligible experience. He's a Dunedan Paladin. You'd think a holy warrior of a noble race would have better things to do with his time than scum-camp lice, but roguelikes are unpredictable that way, I guess. But regardless of the outcome I
do spend some time every day watching my little Borg buddy. I'm rootin' for him.
You can read a great deal about Angband in Stiv's
phenomenal Let's Play, which recently came to a close. I bet we'll also be talking about it in next week's roguelike-centric Active-Time Babble, too! This is a safe bet, seeing as how Stiv is slated to join us for the discussion.
category: games | forums |
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Resistance is futile
03 February 10 | 15:30 | Posted by:
I'm getting a little worried about my
Angband Borg. He's been standing in this same room for most of the day, surrounded by giant white lice. They can't seem to harm him at all, but he's too stupid to use any sort of area-effect power that would clear out the room, so he just keeps killing the same creatures over and over. I've never seen a more frustrating screensaver than this -- I wish I could jump in and take manual control of the idiot, but of course any time I touch an input device it wakes the system and pauses the simulation.
Stupid, stupid Paladin!
category: games | forums |
six comments |
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