Flexing the Geek Muscle(s)

By Jeff | Published: 9 March 2010

Since my site has become hopelessly out of date I have decided to post the fruits of my evening’s activities.

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).

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Elantris (2005)

By Jeff | Published: 20 February 2010

NOTE: My review below is utterly filled with spoilers, so I suggest you do not read it unless you have already read the book. If you want to read a good impression of the book that is essentially spoiler free, check out Orson Scott Card’s review.

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.

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Mass Effect 2 (2010)

By Jeff | Published: 18 February 2010

Never have I been more impressed, and disappointed with a game sequel.

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.

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Mass Effect (2008)

By Jeff | Published: 18 February 2010

Thanks to the Steam holiday sale I finally got around to playing this game. Originally, I bought this game when it first came out and was receiving a pretty good critical review. At the time I was busy with graduate school, and work so I did not have the time to play the game. Only recently have I really thought about trying to get back into it again. A few months ago I popped it in the Xbox 360 and gave it a go.

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.

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Who Dat

By Jeff | Published: 8 February 2010

…say dey gonna beat dem Saints

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.

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