Archive for the ‘Games’ Category

Wolf found this video from Element Animation the other day. I had seen some of their animations before but this is the best I’ve seen so far. Be sure to check out some of their other Minecraft animations.

Element Animation Youtube Channel

This is my bauble run in World 1 of Super Adventure Box, the April Fool’s day surprise by ArenaNet in Guild Wars 2. It is not a speedrun or tutorial or walkthrough by any means, just something more for posterity’s sake to say, “I did this once.” (Or 270 times.)

With nine characters to get through and also wanting to open the mini-boss chests, I had to figure out the most streamlined, consistent path possible. That meant not stopping to kill mobs, depending on them to drop keys, backtracking for chests, or detouring great distances for hidden rooms, Queen Bee Dogs, etc.

My bauble-hording is due to one of the designers hinting that the following SAB iterations will be more group-oriented and/or score-based; also that these skins will be unique to this month’s event. I’m hoping this won’t be the case though – this is the closest I’ve come to finding something like solo farming from the original Guild Wars. I will truly be sad when April ends.

Guild Wars 2 – Super Adventure Box [ArenaNet on Soundcloud]
GW2 Super Adventure Box Bauble digging locations [Dulfy]
Super Adventure Box [Guild Wars 2 Forum]

Domino found and linked me this video (thanks!) – all I have to say is that if you love Minecraft and you love swords, check this out. Radness…

Far Cry 3 was different than Far Cry 2 in so many ways. Most of all, it had a great story and didn’t insult you as a player. Besides wanton destruction, one of my favorite pastimes in the game was wingsuit gliding. It’s the first game that I remember having it and it was really well done. Without the huge open terrains it wouldn’t have worked. Enjoy the video.

The first time we saw him it was absolutely memorizing. A huge norn naked except for fuzzy boots, boxing gloves and bunny ears. All was dyed in pink. It was like a train wreck, I couldn’t stop watching. Even after I recorded it, I caught myself watching it repeatedly. See it for yourself: the hypnotizing power of Techno Norn, otherwise known as Seracohw.

Guild Wars 2 is very beautiful, but very buggy. There are renown hearts that don’t work as intended, events which are broken on and off, floating props, environmental glitches, character model issues, and many skills and traits which just don’t work. Developer emphasis seems to be on adding new content over fixes – and the issues which can be resolved are only patched on a set schedule once per month. Overall, there is a lack of consistency throughout the game which, far from making it unplayable, goes a long way towards game polish.

Above is the first half of a series of clips illustrating bugs which can be seen in a video format. Apologies to Mr. Soule for using his wonderful music in such a fashion.

Cheating in gaming has acquired an often undeserved negative reputation. With early console games, cheating codes were a part of almost every game. I’ve never meet anyone who beat Contra without entering the Konami code. Today, with so much gaming being multiplayer in nature, cheating in gaming is given the blanket reaction of “evil.”

Where cheating gained this reputation was large in part from online FPSs. Aim bots, wall hacks, and ESP, to name a few, became common in early PC games like Counter Strike, Quake and Unreal Tournament. But what of the “single player,” what is he/she to do? While as a child there were magazines dedicated to cheat codes, single player cheats today are all but gone. For reasons other than competitive multiplayer, developers stopped including these codes in their games. This is possibly because of the increased cost of development and tighter publisher control of gaming content.

So why do I bring all this up? Because I have a confession. I’m a cheater. I dirty, pond-scum-sucking cheater. No, I’m not busting out infinite score-streaks in BlackOps. I’m talking about single player. Most commonly in RPGs, I find myself cheating to remove anything I feel is taking fun out of the game. The biggest offender I would have to say is inventory. The very first mod I installed for Oblivion was a Bag of Holding you could find in a dungeon as soon as you left the sewer. It’s no fun having to make multiple trips to haul loot to a vendor just so you can afford better gear, or having to choose between two awesome swords because you only have room for one. Luckily, most RPGs have inventory increasing mods or ways to do it through modifying the settings files.

Another common cheat would be for currency. Money, gold, credits, gil; whatever it is, it’s used as a pacing or gating mechanism in games. But the thing is, I’m forced to grind in multiplayer games for these resources – it’s even considered part of the content. But in single player RPGs were you can easily put  in 60 hours, I don’t need my gaming time to be stretched out. The first Dragon Age had a merchant in the prologue that had unique items that you only had access to when you had no money. One console command later and I have a nice new spiffy staff.

One commonly stated downside to this kind of cheating is that it makes the game too easy… but you will never catch me saying that. Divinity 2 was a punishing game early on: I was dying with every corner I turned. A little skill point memory hacking to put me slightly ahead of the curve and the game whole game opened up for me. It went from frustrating to fun.

The final common reason I cheat is for fun. After you have played through a game multiple times and have done it all but still are loving it, what do you do? You turn on infinite ammo and no recoil and go to town. You turn on god mode and proceed to kill that pain-in-the-ass boss a dozen times with big-ass smile on your face.

So yeah, I’m a cheater. How about you?

I really like this Borderlands 2 screencap – but it’s an endgame spoiler.