Site update

This blog has been a sort of holding tank while I got my original site (RPG Rewind) straightened out. I’ve retooled everything over there and it seems to be running smoothly so any further updates will take place at RPG Rewind. I’m going to leave this blog here and I don’t plan on deleting anything as it will serve as an archive of my past posts.

So please update your bookmarks to www.rpgrewind.com (for the last time… I promise!) and let me know what you think of the new site.

 

The Backloggery

So I decided to take stock of my backlog and found this site called The Backloggerythat lets you catalog the games you have and mark them according to several categories. The two categories that matter the most for me are “Beat” and “Unfinished” as I don’t see me “mastering” too many games. So the damage is as follows:

That’s 85 games that are unfinished and I gave myself one game (Blue Dragon) that I could categorize as having beat. This includes all the PS1 games that I currently have but there are many more that I just haven’t gotten around to buying from Ebay yet.So now I’m focusing on Dragon Quest VIII which I started shortly after it was released in 2005 and have only put about 30 hours into so far.

 

This hurts my head

This hurts my head. What’s that, you ask? My current videogame backlog is a painful thing. Realizing that I have almost 100 games that I own and haven’t completed is a humbling thing and it has led me to re-evaluate some things. One of them is that I really have no business replaying Fallout, a game I’ve already completed twice.

Not only that, but I’m not particularly enjoying Fallout this time through. I think I need to be a bit more honest with myself when I’m not enjoying a game and be prepared to let it go more quickly. So Fallout’s gone.

I also played around a bit with Saga Frontier and really don’t think that’s the game for me either. Much like Persona 1, it seems pretty crude and unpolished and I think I’ll enjoy playing the sequel more.

So now I’m going to take a look at Alundra. I put about 30 minutes into it last night and like what I’ve seen so far but I have a substantial worry about it. I’m not particularly good at action-RPG’s as my reflexes aren’t what they used to be. So I think I’ll give it a fair shot and see what happens but I’m prepared to shelve it, especially as reviews I’ve read indicate that it’s a very difficult game.

 

Fallout + TiVo Desktop = badness

Alright I solved my buggy Fallout problem and it turns out it was a conflict with the TiVo Desktop software.  Apparently they don’t play nice with each other so I’ll have to disable that when I need to play Fallout.  I do have this dread with old PC games that I’m eventually going to get to a point where I just can’t run them anymore.  But for now at least, Fallout is back on.

In fact, I went to Gizmo’s while I was wearing a wire for Killian and recorded his confession that he wanted Killian dead.  I then joined up with the town guard to take out Gizmo and his bodyguard.  I’m happy to say I landed the deathblow for both of them, though Ian and Dogmeat both helped.  Oh yeah, did I mention I now have Dogmeat?  He thought I was his owner so now he’s following me around!

One small problem I’m running into is I’m freaking rich.  I have over 3,500 bottlecaps and a bunch of stuff I could sell but no one has enough stuff or money to trade.  Killian’s inventory is dried up so I’m guessing I’m screwed until I get to The Hub.  I hope to be heading there shortly.

 

Happy New Year (with bugs)!

So I decided to start up Fallout yesterday and made it to Junktown.  I found the evil doctor who is selling body parts for food (yuck) and revealed his evil plans and killed him and his bodyguards.  But I noticed that I was having some serious graphics bugs while playing.  The screen would go black and wherever I would move my mouse the screen was “uncovered” a bit.  I thought it was a problem with my computer needing rebooting but the problem persisted even after a reboot.

And this is why I have a love-hate relationship with PC games.  I want to play Fallout but really don’t have the patience to deal with troubleshooting bugs.  I might fiddle around with it a bit later today but if this continues I’m probably going to have to give up on Fallout.

 

Vault 15 was a bust

I knew I needed to go back to Vault 15 as it is one of the only places on my map at the start of the game.  My problem was, I couldn’t figure out how to get a rope and get to the second floor.  Wasn’t there a rope somewhere in Shady Sands?  I seem to remember that from one of my early playthroughs.

Then I remembered that I can barter in Fallout.  Don’t ask me why I forgot about this because I don’t know.  So I found someone in Shady Sands who had a rope and I traded some flares and some bottlecaps for it and then Ian and I were off to Vault 15 again.

This time we were much more successful with the rats and we made it down the three floors of the vault.  The first time a giant rat came charging toward me it took me by surprise but I shot him in the head and he went bye-bye.  I love critical hits.

 

Once I got to the bottom I got the message that the vault was irreparably damaged and would not be any help in my quest.  Bummer but I did get 500 xp from it and went up to level 3.  I got to pick a perk so I chose awareness and decided to head down to Junktown.

Once in Junktown I stumbled upon a problem with a local named Gizmo.  Killian, who appears to be the law in this town, wants me to get some evidence on Gizmo.  I’m trying to decide if I want to wear a wire or not.

 

One thing I think I’m going to do first is head back to Shady Sands.  I seem to remember that Tandi gets captured by raiders at some point and I want to take care of that before I get too involved in Junktown.  If I can rescue her that’d be nice, though I’m pretty happy with Ian and can’t see wanting to bring Tandi along.

 

A funny thing happened on the way to Junktown

So I’m now playing Fallout for the third time.  But I haven’t played it at all for almost 10 years so I’ve forgotten much of it .  The first two times through the game I was very focused on making an uber-character so I spent a lot of time researching the “perfect build”.   I ended up making a high-perception, lucky sniper and basically kicked ass through the whole game.  I didn’t want to do that again so I rolled up a completely different kind of character.

 

First off, I decided to play as a female which should make things interesting.  I also put a lot of points into Speech and made myself Charismatic and Good Natured.  I intend to specialize in Small Guns and I plan to Steal everything that isn’t bolted down.

Now I know there’s combat in this game and I’m prepared to fight my way out of most situations.  But I also wanted to see what it was like maybe taking a less violent approach.  I’m guessing the game allows for different playstyles, so hopefully I haven’t gimped my character.

The interface takes some getting used to.  While I appreciate the many options available to me, things do seem clunky and I’m not getting used to right-clicking my mouse to choose the move cursor then right-click again to choose the selection cursor, then hold down a left-click to activate a menu with options.  Ugh.  The game does run at glorious 640×480 resolution and I’m on a 1680×1050 LCD display but it fortunately does a great job of upscaling so it looks fine to me.

So I left Vault 13 to go in search of a water chip.  I stopped off at the booming metropolis of Shady Sands and picked up a mercenary named Ian.  He seems pretty good with a gun which helps as my combat skills aren’t that great right now.  When my subtle negotiations fail, he helps clean up the messes.

With Ian in tow we set off to investigate Vault 15 to see if they had a water chip.  It turned out to be abandoned which was no help at all.  We did fight several large rats to get inside it and this combat led to my level going up.  Deep inside, there was a shaft that led down to… something but I needed a rope to access it and I am currently ropeless.  So we left Vault 15 and headed back to Shady Sands hoping to find a rope but instead I got hit by a random encounter and we were wiped out by some mercenaries.

Then I realized that I hadn’t saved my game since I left Shady Sands with Ian so I lost all my progress in Vault 15 and the level up I’d made.  This is one of the major differences between console and PC games: in a console game there would inevitably have been a checkpoint or save point that basically said “Hey you!  Save here okay?”  I’ll have to get used to a more do-it-yourself experience.

So now I’m heading back to Vault 15 to wipe out the rats and go up a level again.  Then I think I’ll head to Junktown.

 

Fallout

Fallout, “a post nuclear role playing game,” was released in late 1997. It was developed by the now-defunct Black Isle Studios and published by the now nearly-defunct Interplay. It was a sequel of sorts to Wasteland which was originally released in 1998. Fallout was critically acclaimed and spawned a sequel and several spin-offs.

True story: I bought my first PC in January of 1998, having been a Mac guy for years before that. When I got it, I wanted to play some games and Fallout was the 2nd PC game I ever bought (the first was Dark Reign which I also loved but hasn’t held up quite as well). I had bought a copy of PC Gamer and thought the game sounded great from their review.

I played it through, finished it and then restarted it and played it through a second time. It was a completely great experience and I’ve thought about replaying it again for years but never got around to it.

I definitely think it’s time for another trip through the Fallout universe. Especially since I never finished Fallout 2 and now Fallout 3 is heavy in development. Plus it’ll be a nice change of pace from all the Japanese RPG’s I’ve been working on lately.

 

And now for something completely different…

I’ve learned something about myself over the past couple of days. Hmm? What is it Paul? Well I’ll tell you.

I like strategy RPG’s a lot but for some reason I seem to want to take my time with them. It was true for Shining Force which took me probably 6 months to finish. It was true for the first Gameboy Fire Emblem which was one of the best games I’ve played. It took me probably 9 months to finish and I still haven’t started Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones and have only played a couple of levels of Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. I got Jeanne D’Arc for my PSP the week it was released back in August. I’ve only put about 16 hours into it, love it and am certain I will finish it. But I’m not in a hurry.

So where does this leave Arc the Lad II? Not to mention Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics? I’m afraid I will play them, most likely finish them but I don’t think I’m going to make them primary games in my little project here. I really am enjoying Arc II but I don’t feel compelled to play it straight through which makes for some pretty boring blogging.

So here’s what I’m going to do: I put Arc II on my PSP and transferred my saved game. I will continue to play it and I feel certain I will finish it sometime. When I do, or as I make major progress and feel compelled, I will write about it. But in the meantime, I’m going to choose a different game to play. Something completely different.

Fallout.

 

The White House

So after being lost and frustrated in the forest I eventually found my way out of there and arrived at the White House. This is a place where an evil man has been experimenting with children and turning them into monsters. There’s a political joke around here somewhere but I’m going to gracefully walk away.

The cool thing about Ark II is how it mixes traditional and strategy RPG’s. There’s a lot of walking around and talking to characters which is familiar to me from typical Japanese RPG’s. But there are no random battles at all. Instead you enter an area and hit a trigger which starts a battle. These are similar to strategy RPG’s but also quite different from something like Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy Tactics. The battles really remind me of the Shining Force games, and that’s a good thing because they were some of my early experiences with console RPG’s. There’s a grid, you move into position and execute attacks or use special abilities each turn while the enemies do the same. Unlike more current strategy RPG’s, Ark II’s battles take place fairly quickly. They usually take 5-6 minutes I’d guess.

It’s a nice system and makes it easy to want to keep playing. I’m about 10 hours in now.

After making our way through the White House we came upon an interesting boss battle – Gunhed.

This guy was a lot of fun to fight. He had around 8 different parts to him and all had to be destroyed to defeat him. Once he was removed we found the poor children who were being held captive in the White House, just like Elc once was. The bad thing is the current evil guy du jour Gallarno turned them into vicious creatures so we had to kill them all. In the process, Elc was wounded and the whole group was rescued by Arc and his airship.

I’m kind of at a loss as I gave up on Ark I so I really don’t know what Arc and his gang are up to. However, the second game is so much better than the first that I really couldn’t see finishing it just to see what happens in the story.

A couple of other things. Lieza has an ability that lets her capture monsters. We started out with a monster in our group and I had her capture a kobold several hours back and that’s it. Maybe I should be capturing more monsters but I like the two I have right now. Also I have the Ark the Lad Monster Arena which apparently lets you build your characters or captured monsters further. I haven’t touched it.

These may be fatal mistakes that come back to haunt me but so far the game has given me no indication that I should be doing something else. It’s certainly not been a difficult game up to this point.