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Holy Game Explosion!

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Valkyria Chronicles
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It's been forever and an age since I posted anything significant, and that's because my gaming world seems to have exploded. I've got so much stuff to play I don't even know where to start writing about it all - and so I've decided to post a written thumbnail gallery of what I'm going through right now.

Games I'm Still Playing

Star Ocean: The Last Hope, XBox 360

A Kingdom for Keflings, XBox 360 Live

Games I'm Playing But Haven't (Yet) Written About

Fantastic Contraption, http://www.fantasticcontraption.com

Amazing little web physics game along the lines of The Incredible Machine. You must get an object from one place to another by building fantastic contraptions out of various types of wheels and rods. Free to play with extra content if you're willing to pay a little. It's well worth it.

Little Big Planet, PS3.

I haven't dug too much into this one yet; I just picked it up a couple of days ago. I'm late to join this party and it's a shame, it's a pretty mind-blowing gaming experience. At it's core, LBP is a fairly typical platform game, but they expose that core in an unprecedented way by giving you all the tools you need to create a rediculous variety of worlds of your own to play in, alone or with friends.

Persona 4, PS2

I caved into temptation and started playing Persona 4, and was hugely impressed. As fantastic as Persona 3 is, Persona 4 takes a small step beyond it in nearly every respect. The steps may be small but the number of them adds up to a great difference; Persona 4 is one of the best RPGs I've played, so far. I'll be writing it up soon.

Valkyria Chronicles, PS3

This game really blew my mind, even more so than Little Big Planet. When I got myself a PS3, I got it for two reasons - it was the cheapest BluRay player available on the market at the time, and because I want to get Final Fantasy XIII for the PS3 when it's released. If I'd known about it, Valkyria Chronicles would have been more than enough justification. It's a strategy roleplaying game, not a genre I've ever tried before, but now I think I've been missing out. I'm not going to rave about this one too much, it's my #1 priority for an Impression post; I'll save it for that, coming up soon.

Pain, PS3 Store

This is a pretty small game I was introduced to just last week. The idea is to flick a living crash test dummy of a character around a scene, causing as much destruction as you can. It sounds kind of brainless and silly, which it is, but it's amazingly addictive and satisfying to play. The base game comes with one scene and a couple of characters to throw around. Two additional scenes and a large number of extra characters are available for purchase on the Sony Online Store.

Games I Am No Longer Playing

Persona 3 FES, PS2.

  • I'm still sucked in by the story on this one, but sadly I reached a point where I could not defeat a boss encounter and don't have enough saved games to go back and level up to try again. I will start a new game in the future, manage the early game days better, and possibly play at Easy level just so I can get through the story more effectively.

Harvest Moon - Tree of Tranquility, Wii.

  • A good game, one I enjoy, but I'm too far off the target audience for it to hold my attention against the likes of Star Ocean, Persona 4 and Valkyria Chronicles.
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Impressions: Harvest Moon - Tree of Tranquility

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Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility
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Right off the bat I'll admit this is not the most timely impression. The game has been out for a couple of years, but I thought I'd write about Tree of Tranquility because I've recently had cause to start looking into what makes the Harvest Moon series tick and get familiar with it's mechanics.

I'm not a complete stranger to the series. I do have and enjoy a related game, Rune Factory,  for the Nintendo DS. Rune Factory involves a heavy dose of fantasy swords and sorcery though, which puts me much closer to it's target audience. The Harvest Moon series is all about building the biggest, most successful ranch possible by farming, raising animals, courting a potential spouse, getting married, and having children.

So what does Tree of Tranquility have to offer me, a guy who likes Half-Life 2, Burn Out Revenge, and Mario Kart? Well I also like The Sims series, so there's some common ground there. Harvest Moon is a similar life simulation game, just more stylized and specialized.

As the title suggests, Tree of Tranquility is a very tranquil, relaxing sort of game. You're a young rancher just moved to a new island, ready to begin a life for yourself. You start with your choice of 3 plots of land to work, and can buy more land later when you've gotten your feet under you.

Your early days on the island will be spent preparing your first fields for planting, a grueling process that will drain your character's endurance pretty severely. Eventually you'll have enough land cleared of rocks, weeds and other impediments to plant some proper crops and start earning some money. The longer you play though, the more experience your character gains with each tool that he (or she) uses. You'll level up your tools individually; spend a lot of time watering crops and your ability to use the watering can increases. Plow a lot of land, and your plow skill increases. Use a scythe to clear weeds, harvest grasses and other produce, and your scythe skill increases. Fish a lot and your fishing rod skill increases, etc.

Leveling your skills in these and other tools is critical. The higher your skill, the more you can do with the same amount of stamina. Controlling the amount of stamina you use is central to the game, so anything you can do to cut down the stamina required to earn money will get you ahead. In addition to building your skill at using the tools, the tools themselves are upgradable either by paying for better types, or upgrading existing tools at lower cost, but with the requirement of supplying the increasingly rare ores needed for the work.

Once your skills have leveled up a bit you'll be able to finish most of your chores pretty quickly in each day, leaving you time to explore other elements of the game play. One of the chief elements you'll want to investigate is the 'courting a wife/husband' story line. Getting married and having kid(s) is one of the big criteria for the eventual success of your ranch, and one that'll take a long time to complete. I'm only a couple of seasons into my game at the time of this writing, so I haven't gotten very far in any individual story line, but I have learned that courting someone involves visiting them frequently and giving them a lot of gifts after you learn what they like and what they don't.

As I get further into the game, I'll post more about it. For now though, my impression is that it's an interesting "relax time" game with elements taken from RPGs, time management, and resource management games. Unlike most time management games though, you get the experience without the stress of any actual time pressure. It's a good way to spend a lazy couple of hours.

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The Joys of Heat Management Part 2

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New fan got ordered yesterday. It shipped today. With any luck it'll arrive tomorrow. If not, it should be here Thursday. The impressions piece on Persona 3 FES is delayed until the main system is up and running. Until that happens, my desktop is basically the most expensive paperweight I own.

Update: No joy today, the fan is still en route. Hopefully tomorrow then. On the plus side, my signed "10 Years of UserFriendly.org" book did arrive today with a nifty T-shirt as an added bonus. Thank you J.D, not just for the book, but for 10+ years of laughs, in the comic and outside it.

Friends & Colleagues

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My friend and co-worker Jesse Scoble was kind enough to feature my site on his blog today after finding my link over on Facebook.  This was a pretty cool gesture on his part so I thought it only fair to return the favor. You can check out his site at http://jscoble.com/ Jesse's been in the industry a while so I always enjoy talking with him about what he's working on, projects we've done in the past, etc. His site has been up for a couple of years now, so there's plenty to dig into; I know I will be.

The Joys of Heat Management

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Die of an Intel 80486DX2 microprocessor (actua...
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My celebration of the crash-free computer was a bit premature. I've had two of the worst crashes yet today, but at least it conclusively identified the problem for me - my computer just got around to informing me that the CPU fan is running too slow and failing. This is disappointing, but at the same time, as bad hardware goes it's just about as cheap to replace as it's possible to get, so I'm VERY relieved. I was afraid for a while I might have to get a new video card, motherboard or processor, none of which I can afford at the moment.

So it seems for the time being I won't be able to play any serious computer games. No Half-Life 2, no Portal, no Sims 2, at least until I can get a new fan installed. The system seems to run fine as long as I avoid taxing it with games.

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