Chapter 2 – First Explorations and the Balmora Thieves Guild Last Seed 17 (Day 2) Balmora, as seen from the Silt Strider platform The driver awoke me upon our arrival in Balmora. It was still dark and the sky was overcast but the rain had stopped and I could see a few lights in the town as its inhabitants went about their business. Thanking the driver, I descended into the streets of Balmora. A Dark Elf guard was idly keeping watch near the Strider stop and I asked him directions to the South Wall Corner Club. It turned out to be relatively nearby, just across the river to the east. The guard seemed to be in a talkative mood so I asked him more about Balmora. He told me that the town was the council seat of House Hlaalu, one of the three great Dunmer houses. He himself was part of House Hlaalu. He spoke of his desire to maintain order and keep the law and complained that crime seemed to be on the increase, even accusing the Balmora magistrate, one Nolus Atrius, of being on the take. With a sneer, he wondered how Larrius Varro, the Legion Champion from the Moonmoth Legion Fort who had sworn to fight corruption, would react to this. Thanking him for his information, I proceeded east across the river and through a narrow, dark tunnel through a row of buildings. Several crates were stacked in the tunnel and I briefly looked through them, finding
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The Morrowind Diaries – Chapter 2
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Review – Singularity
Singularity came out around a year ago but I didn’t get around to picking it up until the Steam sale earlier this summer. In the game you play Special Forces operative Captain Nathanial Renko. You and your partner are sent to the island of Kotorga-12, located off the coast of Russia, to investigate the source of an electromagnetic pulse which disabled an American spy satellite. A second pulse disables the helicopter in which you are riding and you must find your way through the island and uncover the mysteries there in order to escape. For the most part the game is a standard FPS. You run through a more-or-less linear collection of corridors and rooms while fighting enemies and the occasional boss. The game attempts to set itself apart through its story and through a series of puzzles involving something called a “Temporal Manipulation Device” or TMD. The story is interesting. After making your way to shore you soon find that during the Cold War the Soviet Union discovered a substance known as “Element 99” on Katorga-12 and a research installation was built there to uncover its properties. You do this by reading notes and listening to voice logs (left on large reel-to-reel tape recorders) as you make your way through the base. This is probably the most atmospheric part of the game, as you make your way though ruined labs and classrooms. You learn that even though Katorga-12 was presented as a workers paradise, in reality there was a
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Let’s Play! – Precursors (Parts 5 & 6)
Still on the planet Goldin, Treece Crichton demonstrates why he is a pilot and not a commando during a raid on the bandit’s base. He also continues his grand theft buggy streak, wonders how everyone keeps shooting at him without having any weapons, has an inordinate number of grenades thrown at him and finds out that it is apparently all Bush’s fault. Just another day in Precursors.
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The Road to Phaedra
The sun had just gone down when I got to the town gates. Some places closed up tight at sunset but this one looked like it stayed open. There was almost no other traffic and the guard barely glanced in my direction as I passed, instead concentrating on using a torch to light the large beacon over the main entrance. The usual tourist spots were just inside, torchlight streaming from most of them though the burger and coffee joints had their typically anachronistically artificial lighting, the cost of which I suspected would be reflected in their prices. I went a bit further down the main road before taking a side street and finding a smaller place with a more subdued illumination scheme. Inside I found a seat at the end of the bar. The bartender was busy with a couple of guys in typical traveller garb but indicated that he had noticed me with a nod. I settled my pack at my feet while waiting and looked over his current customers. Their gear was a bit too neat and clean and coordinated a bit too well. New on the Road. I winced as the bartender handed them a couple of Buds. Really new then. Previous customers served, he grabbed a towel and came over to where I was sitting. “What’ll you have?” he asked, wiping the towel quickly across the bar in front of me. He glanced over my own clothing as he did. It was similar to what the
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The Morrowind Diaries – Chapter 1
Chapter 1 – Arrival in Morrowind Each event is preceded by prophecy. But, without the hero, there is no event. Last Seed 16 (Day 1) I no longer remember why I was sent to prison. Perhaps I never knew. All my memories are of a long series of days, each like the other, stretching backwards for an unknown number of months or years. When confined to a cell one no longer measures time by the cycles of the sun or the changing of the seasons. Only the rituals of the arrival of food or the removal of the chamber pot exist to mark the passing of time. I ceased to count them long ago. My name is Aldarian, of the Redguard people. Unlike my kin, I was never one to seek the open battle of combat. Instead, I fought battles with my mind and my wits, an Agent who sought information and secrets which would allow me to advance myself and my clan. Perhaps that was my downfall. Perhaps I learned some bit of information that should have been kept secret. It would be impossible for me to know; I knew many such bits of information. Some I reported to my superiors while others I kept for myself. Perhaps I failed to keep one I should have. All I know is that they came for me one night and took me to the Imperial prison where I spent an unknown part of my life. Then, a few days ago, I
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Dark Fall: The Journal
A walkthrough of the game Dark Fall: The Journal
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Remembering the Bomb
There was a time when I knew how the world would end. I grew up in a time when our elementary school would hold nuclear attack drills with the same regularity as they did fire or tornado drills. Regular PSAs on television and radio would remind us to “Duck and Cover!” in the event of a nuclear strike. In college we were dutifully shown the location of our dorm’s fallout shelter and told how to get to it when the seemingly inevitable occurred. In the 1960s and ’70s we knew with a certainty that is hard to describe or even understand now that the world was going to end, and that it would end in fire. I was thinking about this because I’ve been playing through the various DLC for Fallout: New Vegas. The Fallout series of course is set in the aftermath of a global thermonuclear exchange between the US and China. But in the game the war was long ago; 200 years ago in the case of New Vegas. Much of the world is a wasteland but civilization is slowly recovering. (More slowly than I think it should be, but that’s a quibble for a different post.) In New Vegas life in the Mojave Wasteland is tough, but life is going on. In fact, it seems to be a great, exciting place for adventure. The horror that brought this world into existence is almost an afterthought. Almost. Then I started playing Honest Hearts. First nuke hit SLC inside
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Who’s the Boss?
OK, so last time I was talking about Hydrophobia Prophecy and how much it annoyed me when it suddenly broke my suspension of disbelief by suddenly throwing in elements of what was essentially “magic” into what had been a science fiction thriller. Well, I’m not through beating the dead horse of Hydrophobia yet. Because shortly after gaining magical powers from nanotechnology, our intrepid heroine Kate comes face-to-face with another one of my pet peeves in game design; a boss battle. All along Kate has been facing two things. Environmental hazards (in the form of the ship she is own being on fire and sinking) and the agents of the Malthusians attacking her. These hazards and opponents have been slowly increasing in difficulty as Kate’s resources (and the player’s skill) increase. Then suddenly Kate has magical abilities and, two rooms later, is suddenly locked in a battle with a rocket-firing turret that she has to short out with her water-based abilities then shoot in one of its flashing weak points. There is no room for error; hit the turret and weak point exactly right or die. As I have said many times I play games primarily for the story, I want to experience the story or the world as an active participant, not as a passive observer. Boss fights take me completely out of the story. They are sudden reminders that I am playing a game. At one point boss battles made sense. In the arcade days you needed a way
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Broken Suspenders
Over the weekend I was playing Hydrophobia Prophecy, one of the games I picked up during Steam’s big sale last month. Hydrophobia takes place on The Queen of the World, a city-sized ship built by a consortium of businesses to research solutions to the world’s environmental and population issues. The ship is then attacked by a group calling itself the Malthusians, who think that the best way to solve the world’s problems is for most of humanity to kill itself. Their goal is to destroy the ship and to capture the result of the ship’s research; a nanotech substance that can turn polluted water into pure water. This substance is dangerous to humans in that if they are exposed to it then it will attempt to turn the water in their bodies to pure water as well; a fatal result when the “water” being purified is their blood. The player takes the role of Kate Wilson, an engineer on the ship who must fight the Malthusians and prevent the release of the nanotech. Despite it having relatively negative reviews I enjoyed the game for a while. The environments and setup seemed fairly realistic and Kate was an interesting departure from the normal game protagonist, being a reluctant hero instead of the usual special forces type. (Though I did get tired of hearing her shriek in fright every thirty seconds… deal with it Kate.) It was also interesting to see a game with an anti-twist; the corporation trying to save the
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…And All the Stars a Stage
The character background story for my character in Star Wars: Galaxies
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