The character background story for my character in Star Wars: Galaxies
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…And All the Stars a Stage
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Review – Amnesia: The Dark Descent
The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. — H.P. Lovecraft – Supernatural Horror in Literature Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a survival horror/adventure game from Frictional Games. However, unlike most “survival horror” you do not spend time fighting the creatures you encounter. In fact, you are not even capable of fighting them. All you can do is run and this, combined with the unsettling aspects of the world you find yourself in, creates a horror game that is truly about horror as opposed to being just another shooter with a handful of disturbing moments. Starting the Descent I commit these words to paper as I fear that neither I nor my sanity will survive this night, yet I am more afraid that my story will perish with me. Know that I have, for purely selfish reasons, committed many crimes against both man and nature. But also know that I am now attempting to set right a chain of circumstances started by myself through my own fear and ignorance. May the blind gods have mercy on me. In Amnesia you take on the role of Daniel, a man suffering from the amnesia of the title. While the concept of the amnesiac protagonist has been (over)used time and time again, Amnesia manages to introduce a new twist by revealing quite early on that you induced the amnesia in yourself deliberately. You discover this quite early on in
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Review – Borderlands
Pandora. I have used the last of my savings to travel to this world. There are no regular transports here and the crew of the tramp freighter that dropped me off seem surprised when I told them I would be staying. And looking around I can see why; the starport is nothing more than a cleared area in what looks to be a junkyard, the local wildlife has already attacked me twice and the place smells like a landfill. But, if the rumors are true, it is also the location of a vault of lost, Eridian technology. If I can find the Vault, I can sell it’s location and contents for enough credits to let me travel to the core worlds and live the rest of my life in luxury. I just have to find it first. I have used the last of my credit reserves to take a bus to a town in wastelands near where the Vault is said to be located. From there I can start my search. Borderlands came out around a year ago but I ignored it at the time because I was somehow under the impression that it was a multi-player only game. I have since learned that while it does have multi-player support it is primarily a single-player game and I picked it up earlier this year during a Steam sale. And I am glad I did because I discovered that it is actually quite a fun shooter. Welcome to Pandora I have
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Review – Minecraft
I have found myself on the shores of a strange land. I do not remember how I came to be here or know where I am. There are no signs of other people or habitation as far as I can see. I will explore, and see if I can find some indication as to where I am. Minecraft is an open sandbox style game being produced by Mojang Specifications. Players are dropped in an uninhabited world where they can explore to find resources they need to build tools and shelter to protect them from the hostile enemies that come out at night. That’s pretty much it. But despite what sounds like a very basic premise, the game offers a surprising amount of depth, detail and fun. I have managed to fashion a few simple tools for myself from the trees growing in this land and have used them to excavate a small cave for myself in the side of a rock wall. I had to do this because I have discovered that I am not alone in this strange place. Strange creatures walk the land at night and they have proven their hostility towards me. For now I crouch in this dark hole, but when the morning sun rises I will began my search for more resources with which to build weapons and armor for myself. To do this I will have to establish a safe base of operations and start mining for the materials I will need. When you
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Review – F.E.A.R. (First Encounter Assault Recon)
I was making my way slowly though the basement of the building, trying to find a way up to the main floor, when I found the first bodies. I’ve been in enough combat that bodies shouldn’t bother me anymore, but these did. Not because they were bodies, but because it looked like they had been partially eaten. And not by rats like the one I had shot earlier. These bites looked human. F.E.A.R. came out several years ago when I had an older machine that couldn’t handle it. Later I got a machine that could and looked for the game but by that point it was gone off the shelves. As a fan of survival horror games I was still interested in playing it and so was pleasantly surprised last month when Steam suddenly put the original F.E.A.R. and its expansions on sale. So I finally got the chance to play it. Even though the game has been out for five years now I still wanted to give my Paleogamer impressions of it. I finally got up to the main floor. The doors have been locked from the inside, so either things happened too fast for anyone here to escape or for some reason they didn’t want to. I’m going to… What was that? Strange… I could have sworn I just saw a child run down the corridor. Why would a child be here in the midst of this carnage? If she is here, I need to find her and
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Nine Rings in Mordor
What if…
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The Lord of the Rings had been written by SF/Fantasy author Roger Zelazny? -
Let’s Play! – Precursors (Parts 3 & 4)
In this episode, Treece visits the planet Sunax where he learns the importance of eating his fruits and vegetables while fighting off wild tagos. (Wild. Not domesticated. Definitely wild.)
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RPG – RP = ?
I love RPGs. I love the opportunity to become someone else in a game; becoming a valiant knight, a stealthy spy, a hard-bitten mercenary or a roguish star pilot for a brief time instead of a middle-aged office worker. So when BioWare, probably the premiere RPG gaming company out there, releases not one but two RPGs within a few months of each other, it should be a RPG gaming feast. And with Dragon Age: Origins this was fulfilled. My newly created Grey Warden was soon making his way across Ferelden. Fighting Darkspawn, picking locks, making traps and mixing poisons to aid in his quest, he was eventually able with the aid of his companions to defeat the Arch-Demon and save the world. Just in time too because no sooner had I finished then Mass Effect 2 was released. I had played and enjoyed the original Mass Effect so I quickly loaded it up, imported my character from Mass Effect 1 and launched into space to once again save the galaxy. And just as quickly realized that, even though I was enjoying the game, it wasn’t an RPG. As I said a few paragraphs back, the attraction of playing an RPG is playing a character that isn’t me. Hand me a sword and I’d probably cut my own leg off by accident before I could hit an actual Darkspawn with it. But this isn’t a problem for Dirk Rapier, human rogue and Grey Warden. I add points to his combat skills,
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Mukie
It is a very sad day for us. We had to say goodbye to our dachshund Mukie this past week. He was 16 1/2 and my wife had had him since he was a puppy, but we found out last week that he was suffering from liver cancer and there was nothing we could do. Goodby Mukie. You were a good dog. We miss you.
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The Feast of Departure
It was the Day of Leaving and we were celebrating with the Feast of Departure. Everything we were taking with us had been packed or loaded into the wagons and carts, but there was even more that we would be leaving behind. We had therefore prepared as much of the food as we could and all of us feasted on the stored provisions of many seasons. The children, many of them already in their travel clothes, laughed and ran and played around the tables while we adults ate our fill and reminisced over the seasons we had spent here. Some, newly come to adulthood since our last travels, were nervous about what we would face as we left our home and made our way across unknown lands and those of us who had made the journeys many times before reassured them that our group was strong and would encounter no dangers in the world beyond. Our leader had looked to the sky and the wind and decided the path we would take when we left this place forever but we did not know how far we would have to travel or what we would find along the way. If we encountered a group like ours while out in the world we would be sure not to be taking their path, though sometimes members of our group would decided that they liked the others’ path better and leave to join them just as some of them would come to join us.
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