Author name: Kelly

Game reviews

Age of Conan

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Title Age of Conan
Developer Funcom
Type MMOG
Platform(s) Windows PC
Kelly Score ™ 95 / 100

I’ve been playing massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) more or less since the genre got its name: about 1996. In that time I’ve played at least ten different games of this type: I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the horrendous. And I’m aware that MMOGs face a tremendous challenge beyond just the initial appeal of the first few weeks of play: they have to somehow capture and hold the players attention for years. And when those years have passed, it is nearly invariable that even the best game will end up being remembered by its flaws and disappointments rather than its strengths.

Thus it is that any review of a MMOG is purely a “point in time” perspective. And at this point in time, after about two weeks of play, I can say that Age of Conan is a brilliant game. I can not remember a MMOG that, from day one of its launch, performed so well or impressed me so much.

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Gaming miscellany

Quest for Conan…

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I recently mentioned to my nephew, more or less in passing, that the Age of Conan massively multiplayer game was about to ship. I expected this to result in a “ho hum” sort of response: both he and I have become somewhat jaded over the years from consuming a half score or so different online roleplaying games in the last decade. We play EQ2, there are other decent games, but nothing worth getting excited about.

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Gaming miscellany

EverQuest 2 sucks me back in…

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I’ve been playing less and less of EQ2 during the past year or so. Other than logging in for our regular Saturday session with my Sister Judy and her husband Bryan, my Nephew Shane and his wife Monique, and of course my wife Irene, I really haven’t been playing at all.

I’ve been playing massively multiplayer RPGs for over a decade now: I have a collectors edition version of Ultima Online 🙂 So I could easily chalk it up to just being “bored” or tired of such games in general, and that’s what I did. I even tried a couple of other games. Vanguard was one, but it didn’t appeal, and ultimately the game itself sort of “died out”. More recently I re-activated my World of Warcraft account- that was fun, but more importantly I started to figure out myself and my disinterest a bit more.

Then my Nephew called up and suggested I get out of that WoW crap and create a new character in EQ2- that might be just the thing. Once I started playing that “new” character (actually one I created a year or so ago- a Kerran Paladin), the final piece explaining my ennui fell into place. I’m back to playing a couple of hours several days each week in addition to our Saturday session. And I’ll likely cancel my WoW account again shortly.

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Game reviews

Assassin’s Creed a worthy adventure…

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Title Assassin’s Creed
Developer Ubisoft
Type Third person Sneaker
Platform(s) Xbox 360, PlayStation 3: Windows sometime in 2008
Kelly Score ™ 92 / 100

I believe it is appropriate to note that I am not a historian before I say anything about Assassin’s Creed. Furthermore, I am not a religious person- I’m an agnostic. These two things together mean that my opinions regarding the religious or historical content of the game Assassin’s Creed should be taken with a grain of salt.

Assassin’s Creed is an open-ended third person sneaker with a strong role playing element. It is single player only, with no multiplayer or online elements other than XBox Live achievements. The main character- the guy you play- is oddly sort of a secondary character within the game itself. You are Desmond Miles, a young guy who finds himself kidnapped and held within a lab at a shadowy pharmaceutical company’s offices. The majority of the game is played through Desmond’s “genetic memories” using a machine called the Animus. You spend your time playing through your recovered memories of an ancestor named Altair: an assassin, Hashshashin, or Fedayeen during the period of the Third Crusade.

The plot involves completing a series of assassinations, partly to restore Altair’s status within his guild, and more importantly to disrupt the plans of the invading Templars. A secondary plot involves discovering why Desmond has been kidnapped and forced to live through his ancestral memories. Something is going on in modern times, something sinister and based on ancient rivalries and power struggles. The story is presented through a series of slightly interactive cut scenes (you can change your point of view and move slightly) with first rate voice acting.

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Game reviews

Crysis: a First Person Shooter as it should be done

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Title Crysis
Developer Crytek
Type First Person Shooter
Platform(s) Windows XP/Vista
Kelly Score ™ 95

I bought Halo 3 on my XBox 360 shortly after it came out. I didn’t expect much from it- and that’s what I got. The Halo franchise is good, but has never really “wow”ed me.

At its root, I’d say the problem is partly a matter of the story as presented in the game coming across as “weak”, and partly the visual perspective the game plays from. I understand the back story behind the games is very detailed and rich…but the game doesn’t convey that well to me. As for the perspective: they seem to consistently do something with Halo that combines to irritate me (“an endless stream of passages, all alike…”) and give me motion sickness. First person plus acres of similar looking views equals nausea for me. Add these considerations to the fact that I made a mistake and played 9/10ths of the game on “easy” before discovering that you have to play on “normal” to get any achievements…the thought of playing the game through again made me put the DVD away.

Along comes Crysis. This game is as “different” as Far Cry was a few years ago, and that’s not too surprising I guess as both games were developed by Crytek. Note that Far Cry 2 was *not* developed by Crytek, so who knows what that will be like.

Moving back to the topic…Crysis has the bog-standard first person shooter plot. A super-soldier is part of a squad tasked with investigating some strange happenings on an island near China. The cause turns out to be some sort of alien invasion- much gunfire ensues. What makes Crysis “better” than the standard fare has more to do with how the story is presented, how the player is allowed to interact with the world, and how natural the whole process feels.

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Gaming miscellany

Even wrong, it’s still funny…

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Note: the original Zero Punctuation videos for this post were lost; I’ve replaced them with a few I found funny in 2024

I stumbled across this series of comic video game reviews earlier this week, but didn’t actually watch any of them.  You see, I had heard that this particular reviewer had given a negative review to BioShock, and my unsubstantiated reaction was that the reviewer must be a total moron.

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Game industry

Halo 3 tops $300 million in one week of sales

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I like the Halo series: it’s a decent first person shooter game with a better than average story.  I played the original Halo on the PC and Halo 2 on the XBox.  I haven’t bought Halo 3 for the XBox 360, but I probably will someday soon.  I’d probably rate both of the first two Halos at somewhere between 7 and 8 out of 10.  Good solid games, nothing earth-shattering, but fun.

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