First, let me say to those that are curious, the figures we’re using for player characters are old Mage Knight pieces that we liberated from their bases and then mounted on glass tokens.

Jason played the two PC’s (premade from the quick start rules): Fighty the fighter and Clericy the cleric, and I DM’d the kobold attackers. After the fact, I think its pretty obvious this battle was designed for 4-5 PC’s because I gave Jason a serious run for his money, and killed Clericy.

The highlight of the battle was the kobold slinger urinating on the unconscious Clericy while Fighty was engaged by other kobolds.

Ultimately, Jason emerged successful with Fighty surviving the battle with 4 hit points. Clericy, you will be missed.

Bunny’s new interest in D&D has sparked my interest in the hobby once again. I was already considering getting back into it for a similar reason (I rarely leave the house). My brother and I have been slowly picking up the 4e rules by bumming around on the D&D Insider account I setup a couple of months ago. I got to the point where I actually needed to read the rules in a coherent way so I finally opened the Dungeons and Dragons Core Rulebook Gift Set, 4th Edition that I preordered before the release of 4e. I’ve nearly finished the players handbook, so today Jason and I began constructing some materials for our initial encounter attempt.

The first Frankenstein of the evening was my new GM screen. This is something that I should have done long ago back when I actually played on a regular basis. Back in the AD&D days I just used to prop up some paper folders that I brought the adventure in. Not a very good solution, but it worked and I was a broke high school student. When 3rd edition came out I actually bought an official DM screen, which I used for pretty much everything I ran, regardless of the fact not all those games were D&D 3.0. My new solution is inspired by the Savage Worlds customizable GM screen. It is basically a binder with three panes you can just slide print outs into. However, I wanted a more flexible solution that would not require constantly swapping out reference sheets for different games. So, what I ended up doing was getting two three ring binders which I clip together with a binder clip. Inside the binders I have some document sleeves that I put the reference sheets in, and use binder clips to hold them open to the relevant pages for the game I’m playing. And, yes I did make these 4e reference sheets myself, and yes it took forever. I basically whipped it up in indesign while Jason was drawing grid lines on the poster board for the other project. Total cost for this project was under $7, which is a little less than the 4e Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master’s Screen, which is $10.

The second creation was more of a creature of necessity. Unfortunately, since there are not many gaming places in the area you cannot really get a chessex role playing mat
so you can either order one online, or come up with a more creative solution. We chose to do the later. Basically, our solution was to draw a grid on some pieces of poster board, and them mount them to a sheet of Plexiglas. The total cost was under $20 for a 28″ x 36″ grid, the cost for a comparable chessex mat would be around $25 online (plus shipping).

Elantris is a rarity in modern fantasy writing: a stand alone. The book managed to tell the story of the resurrection of the city of the gods in a mere single novel. I have to say it does a better job than many series.

The book has three protagnoists: Raoden, the prince spends more of his time half transformed into one of the supernatural Elantrians. Sarene, who is Raoden’s wife, although they never met. And, Hrathen, a high ranking priest of Shu-Dereth charged with converting the nation or Arelon within three months. The books alternates between characters quite evening in the first part of the book (which is kind of weird to read), and then begins melding the characters’ chapters together as their lives intertwine and evens come to a boil in the end.

The magic system seems to have some kind of rational basis, but it isn’t developed completely in the book. Essentially, there is a “force” known as Dor that can be tapped by drawing different pictographs (called Aons). Modifiers on the pictographs determine the specifics of the “spell.” Towards the end of the book it is revealed that there are other ways to access Dor other than Aons, such as the mysterious arts used to create the Derethi monks. And, the martial kata of the Jindo merchant.

I did enjoy the book quite a bit. I think that Brandon Sanderson is quickly becoming my favorite contemporary author. I picked up the first Mistborn book because I heard it was largely influential in the decision to have him finish up the Wheel of Time series. But, I will go into that more in my Mistborn post later.

It is pretty clear that Elantris was his first novel, as it is a little rough, and there are some pacing issues. The character are generally good, but there are some incongruities that are a little off putting. But, none of the technical issues detract from the overall experience. And, while not as good as the Mistborn series, I whole heartily recommend the book to anyone interested in the fantasy genre. I give it a 3 on my undecim scale.

ME2 manages to fix many of the issues I had an issue with the first game. Elevators have been removed, resulting is much faster loading screens. It was actually playable on the Xbox because the combat system was streamlined, and you could map more actions to hot keys, etc… The “playing a movie” feel was removed, and replaced by a much more open ended style of game play. I frequently describe the story as “Oceans 11 in Space.” The Mako is no more. And, they even added a few different hacking games, so you aren’t stuck doing the same stupid thing every time. Unfortunately, it seems like for everything they fixed they nerfed something that was good before.

For some reason, beyond all comprehension they replaced the galaxy map with some bullshit micromanagement thing. Now instead of just making a course, you are forced to deal with getting fuel and manually navigating your ship from planet to planet, system to system. Here is a tip game developers, micromanaging shit is not fun. For example, in the first game it was kind of pain in the ass managing all your equipment, converting things to omnigel, etc… So, in the second game they basically eliminated armor, and limited the weapons do to about twenty (more on this later). The new streamline system actually works pretty well, and helps you spend more time focusing on the fun parts of the game. On the flip side, in the first game you could survey some planets but click on “survey” when you navigated to them. It was quick, painless and earned you some experience. This has been replaced with one of the single most infuriating game requirements I have seen in recent years: the resource mining mini-game. This is a task that makes absolutely no sense for your elite captain to be doing. You have a full crew, you could have the slowest guy shit down and scan a planet. Or, better yet use the ships frickin’ AI system. It does not require the captain’s attention to hold down a button and sping a sphere. It is boring, time consuming, and really ruins the core of the game for me.

Back to the equipment situation. One of the things I liked about ME1 was that there were so many custom armors for all the characters. Well, I guess the developers figured fuck that, and went with the really annoying “one outfit, with an alternate unlockable.” And, to make matters worse, the things the people wear make absolutely no sense. The Miranda character you have for basically the whole game goes around in a skin tight spandex suit that shows off every single curve of her body. I’m sure that provided a lot of protection against explosives, or mosquitoes. The outfits are definitely more details and individualized, but they are not practical. At least Shepherd actually wears armor, and his armor is customizable.

When I found out that they stripped out all the weapons, and upgraded I thought that it would be really frustrating, but it worked out alright. I did not really spend much time thinking about the particular gun that I was using. Although, it was kind of lame that I was still using the same pistol I got towards the beginning of the game near the end. In the first game you spent a lot of time going through your inventory finding better versions of the weapon you had, and better versions of the upgrades you have on it. Although the upgrades in the first game did allow for some interesting options, such as making your gun basically never overheat so you could just shoot forever.

In ME2 you cannot shot forever, not even fucking close. In the first game I was cool with the overheat system. I figure directed energy guns would overheat. It was a good balance, you never had to worry about running out of ammo, you just needed to shoot at a pace that prevented you from overheating. ME2 replaced the overheating system with an ammo system. The explanation for the change is pretty stupid, and given the explanation some things in the game make no sense (i.e. Jacob’s loyalty mission). I suppose it would not be too bad, but the ammo in the game is pretty sparse. It is very frustrating to be forced to primarily use the pistol because your assault rifle/whatever burns through ammo so fast. And, once you run out of ammo you cannot fire, period. I should mention that it is technically not ammo, they call it  thermo clips. Rather than having a cooling system link in the first game, the heat from firing is absorbed by chips which have to be ejected, etc… I do not necessarily mind the idea of ammo, but I would have liked to have been able to fire after I am out of thermo clips. Ideally, the clips would allow you to fire quicker, but when you run out it should fallback to a cool down system similar to the first game.

Another backhanded improvement is the hacking game. Sure there are different mini-games, but you are forced to play them, you can not longer bypass hacks. So, but the end of the game I ended up skipping a lot of things because I was sick of the mini-games.

Leveling is a mixed bag. No longer are you awarded experience for dispatching foes. All experience is strictly regulating, and only dispensed for completing missions. Gone are the days of leveling in a difficult battle enabling you to gain and edge and win. Since you no longer receive any benefit from killing enemies I spent a far amount of time trying to figure out ways to progress without grinding through the enemies. Unfortunately, the game designers anticipated this, and made many sequences require you to kill wave after wave of enemy before you are allowed to advance, lame. On the other hand, it only takes 1,000 xp to advance a level. So, getting to the maximum level, 30 (that’s right the level cap is half the first game) can maybe be done on the first play through, and if not almost immediately on the second.

I believe that takes care of all my gripes for the game. This game was much better than the first. While the story is not remotely as epic, it was a hell of a lot more fun to play. I particularly liked that you had much more control over what you did in the game. Sure, you cannot do all the missions out of sync, you do get a lot of control over what you do, and do not do in the game. You do not need to get a full crew, earn their loyalty, or upgrade your ship. You could make the final mission a true suicide run, it really just comes down to what you want to do. This is how games should be.

Ultimately, this game does deserve a good rating, even though they did some incredibly lame things, I am going to focus on the good and hope they cut the BS from the final game in the series. After due consideration I will give this title a 4 on my undecim scale.

Mass Effect on the Xbox is absolutely dreadful. I played up until the Citadel, and hated every single second of it. The film grain and motion blur made me dizzy, the frequently lag and slow down were jarring. And, Shepherd felt sluggish and unresponsive. To make matters more annoying, the tackle system in the game was poorly developed. Gone are the days of careful strategy of KOTOR. They simplified the combat system, but only in a detrimental way. Sure you can give your party members directions, but the AI is pretty shotty, and you are limited in the things you can do, for example you have to issue both team mates the same command.

I put the game back in the box, and moved on with my life. I did a little digging around, and decided that I would probably enjoy the game a lot more on the computer, and I found out that Steam had a $5 sale on it a little while ago, so I hung around to follow the holiday sale around Christmas. Lucky for me they had the sale again so I purchased a license.

Mass Effect on the computer is not exactly what I would call fun, but it was much more playable than on the Xbox. I also did a bit of digging around to find out that I could disable film grain and motion blur, and my computer was fast enough to render without dropping frames. So, once I finally got past the technical issues facing me I was able to dig into the meat of the game.

I would say both the best and worst things about ME is the story. While the story does steal many elements from other science fiction stories, it does come across as quite an epic battle. Unfortunately, this epic battle requires you to be dragged around by your balls through out the game.

Yes, I understand that you spent a lot of money on animating cut scenes, and you want me to see the whole story, but please NEVER employ unskippable cut scenes. This is an unforgivable sin of modern game development. At lesat in ME the story was good, but there are so many games out there with a shitty story that I don’t care about, I just want to skip the cut scenes, whether it is my first or fourth play through.

The other issue is the whole “playing a movie” concept. I know that some people like this, but I personally hate it. I don’t want to have a few moments of shitty game play capped by yet another cut scene. I get that you want to maintain the integrity of the story and atmosphere, but it is really annoying and is just another form of enforced linearity.

The game gives you a couple of choices, because you can execute some missions out of order, but you have to do the missions, so it is really just an illusion. Sure there are dialog options, and side quests and things, but once you screw around with them you realize how pointless they are in the grand scheme of things, and you are still just following a strick path the developers laid out for you.

Hacking mini-games suck. I am not exactly sure why game makers have been using them so much lately. I did end up playing ME and Bioshock back to back, so I was already sick of hacking games when I started ME. And, to make matters worse it was the same annoying mini-game every single time. At least you always have the option to just skip the game by paying with omnigel.

Let’s make vehicles drive like the warthog? I know I had a few trouble adjusting to the controls back when the original Halo came out, but once you get the hang of it, you’re golden. Go with one stick, aim with the other, it controls just like running around with your character. Instead in ME you get the abortion that is the Mako. This thing controls like fat man in an earthquake. I thought the controls were bad on the PC, but they are borderline unusable on the Xbox.

And, the last major thing that I did not like was the elevators. There are a couple of major problems with them, the first, there are simply too many of them. Second, they are scripted loading events so installing the disk to the hard drive (on the Xbox) does not improve loading times here. I did kind of like that there were short dialogs, or news updates though. One of the things I missed from KOTOR was the ability to have dialogs with party members during missions. If you could have advanced dialog with your party members doing elevator scenes you could have killed two birds with one stone.

Having said all that the game actually is not that bad. Once you get the hang of combat, and deal with all your equipment, and getting enough omnigel to bypass the hacking game, the game starts to get pretty funy. I think my judgements are a bit jaded because I am still steaming over the rancid Final Fantasy X, and that I picked one of the more difficult classes to play on the first play through, adept.

There are some things about the game I think they got right. For example, navigating across the galaxy is managed from an intuitive map inteface that allows you to jump from system to system with ease. And, I liked how you were able to equip diffent weapons and armor that changed the appearance of your characters. In some many games you are pretty much stuck with one appearance, and maybe and alternate you can unlock somehow.

This may be the first time that I have spent almost and entire rant bitching about something, and then still turning around and recommending it. Ultimately, I did end up having some fun playing the game towards the end, and the story is quite impressive. So, in spite of all its flaws I will give Mass Effect a 2 on my undecim scale.

Thanks to some kind of miracle the New Orleans Saints won the Forty Fourth Superbowl. Granted, this could have been the best Superbowl ever, had the Jets won the AFC championship. I am sure many people would disagree with me, but the Saints and the Jets are my teams. So, obviously that is the dream  . In case you are wondering, these were the worst teams in their conferences at the time I started watching football. I am just glad I did not start watching football later, otherwise I would have had to be a Lions fan, and that is certainly a fruitless endeavour.

The game itself was somewhat of a nightmare to behold. The Colts are my brother’s team, and it would just not do to have the Colts defeat both my teams back to back to win the championship. I was pretty worried at the beginning of the game, because the Saints came out flat and struggled throughout the entire first half. Fortunately there was a dramatic change of pace at the beginning of the second half when the Saints when for a stunning on side kick to start the half.

The third quarter was a battle of titans, and the Saints did not really pull ahead in earnest until late in the fourth quarter. Peyton was fuming towards the end of the game, and when it came to crunch time he made the slightest mistake which the Saints capitalized on with and interception return for a touchdown that basically sealed the deal.

All things considered it was an excellent game. And, it was easily the best Superbowl since the Jets defeated the Colts forty one years ago. In a world where the “Aints” became Superbowl champions, perhaps there is hope for the Lions…one day? Probably not in this lifetime.

If you take a look at the photo above you’ll see the pull over I purchased. I really like the lettering of the word “Champion” in that design. I would have preferred to get one of their sideline pull overs, but I cannot find them for sale anywhere. Oh well. Go Saints, and click on the photo to buy some Saints Superbowl merchandise.

I hope there is a good android phone out there by the time my contract expires. Apple is seriously starting to piss me off.

The question and answer segment was equally as pathetic. Both sides held tight to their talking points. The president danced around questions, and attempted to shed nearly all responsibility for anything that is not working.

You can read the transcript on TIME’s site (they also have an embed of MSNBC’s copy of the meeting).

Overview

As I mentioned in my MW2 post, I started playing these games on veteran because vanlandw has started the trend. Somehow, he powered through COD4 on veteran on his first play through. And, he considers it the paramount of his gaming career. Obviously, I thought that he was being a little melodramatic so I played through MW2 on veteran on my first play through. MW2 certainly sucked on veteran, but it was not a life altering event. So, I was prepared to give vanlandw a rough time about it. But, I figured first I had better play Call of Duty 4 on veteran.

This did give me the opportunity to discover that COD4 is a much better game than MW2 in numerous ways. The story makes much more sense, the kinds of activities you participate are plausible (no snowmobile races with enemies, etc…), and it just feels more realistic…to a point. There are a few major flaws in COD4 that utterly destroy the experience, I’ll try to outline those now.

Elite Dogs of Utter Death and Destruction

Frequently throughout the game you will encounter dogs in the game. They are as annoying as all hell. When a dog attacks you, nothing else matters. You can get shot while grenades explode around you like fireworks. The only thing that matters is that this dog is going to rip your throat out, and it is nearly impossible to stop it. Once the dog “quick time” event starts, you have to hit melee when the button pops up on the screen. You give about 1/10 of a second to react. So, effectively you need to anticipate when the prompt will come up so you can already be pushing the button. If you hit it to soon, you die. If you hit it too late you die. If you do not hit it at all, you die. Luckily, the fixed this in MW2, so it is actually possible to hist the button in time.

Hey Captain, Look, its Raining…Grenades

The United States spends more on defense than the rest of the G8, and they do not equip their soldiers with infinite grenades. So, where the fuck are these people that live in the ghetto getting all their grenades? It is wretched when you find yourself in a situation where you are trying to pick off enemies to advance, or are just waiting out a timer and you cannot sit in cover long enough to crouch without being surrounded by grenades. On numerous occasions I stopped to scratch my head in an area without enemies only to see the grenade warning pop up because I was standing still for too long. I know this is suppose to be a game play mechanism to encourage you to advance, and feel the pressure of battle, but they take it to the point of absurdity. To a certain extent this has been fixed in MW2, but the enemies still have enough grenades to make you feel uncomfortable.

Hurray, another Choke Point

Frequently in the game you find yourself funnelled into a hellish littler area where you are forced to fight endless waves of enemies unless you advance. Advancement is usually forced down a linear path with spare cover (which does not matter because if you stop behind cover you’ll get naded). Most of the time these choke points are only really difficult because of the poor game testing this game received on the veteran difficulty. And, there is perhaps the mother of all choke points on the stage, “No Fighting in the War Room.” Vanlandw mentioned it in his post, and I experienced it myself. I cannot think of another section of a game that takes two minutes to get through, but it took me countless tries over three hours and two days to get past it. If you want the video below, the section in question is at 4:36. However, I think most of the videos up for this were actually played on hardcore, rather than veteran because I encountered quite a few more enemies in this section. And, to help illustrate this I whipped up a quick graphic to show how bat shit crazy it is.

Another section that was really annoying is the ferris wheel section of One Shot, One Kill. After attempting repeatedly to play this legitly, and just getting naded to pieces I broke down and hid in one of the ticket booths. If you want to know how to do that, here is a video that demonstrates someone pulling it off. Keep in mind that it requires luck, if someone throws a nade in there you are pretty much toast, and when you leave it is a crap shot whether or not you die instantly. Persistence in the key.

The other really annoying area is a shining example of poor testing. The final section of the stage, “Heat,” gives you air strikes, and very little hope of getting to the LZ. On veteran it feels impossible, but it is amazing what a little information will do for you. Check out the video starting at 0:44. Basically all you need to do is follow the timing, and path of this guy and you should be in good shape. You can actually get through the stage without using a single air strike (I did).

For the most part these kind of things are gone from MW2. Sure there are choke points, but there is nothing remotely close to these three travesties.

These situations are extremely frustrated because you can stand their and just watch your team mates shoot at nothing in particular, while waiting for you to pave the way to salvation, which brings me to my next point.

Who Do You Think You Are, Soldier!?

You have team mates in the game, but they are just for show. Basically the only useful thing that your team mates do is let you know when you have advanced past a choke point because they magically teleport up as if they helped you the whole way. Frequently they will just stand out in the open and get totally obliterated, but it doesn’t matter because they are invincible, just like real soldiers. Sometimes they will go out of their way to step in front of you and draw friendly fire. The game rewards you by giving you the game over screen.

The stupid soldier issue is kind of fixed in MW2. You can shoot them forever without repercussion, and they move around a little bit better. But, it is still very much the same.

Conclusion

I could go on for hours, but those are my biggest gripes about the game. And, I whole heartily agree with vanlandw in warning everyone not to play this game on veteran. If you do, you’d be doing it for bragging rights, but not because you could receive in the slightest amount of enjoyment from it.

In conclusion, COD4 is in theory better than MW2, but some show stopping bugs, and balancing issues make it nearly impossible on its highest difficulty. While I ranked this game a 0 based on my first play through (I believe on hardcore), I have to give this game a -5 on veteran.

Parting Thoughts

Despite all this, I think vanlandw did overrate, if only slightly to the difficulty of the game. I receive an equal, if not greater level of frustration on my play through of Ninja Gaidan on the original Xbox.

While I am glad that Apple is finally trying to hit reasonable price points, in this case, starting at $499. But, sadly this device is missing many fundamental features I would look for in a tablet:

• Stylus support, I want to draw and write note damn it)
• Full OS Support, seriously, who wants to be constantly constrained by a walled garden?
• Flash, how can you release a device, and bill it as an “internet device” and not support flash. I hate flash, but it is everywhere. You cannot offer the full internet experience without it.

I would much rather pick up a “ModBook” from Axiotron, although they are way too expensive (almost $2,000).