Personal Blog
Archive for July, 2011
Dungeons of Dredmor: Attempts 001-003
10 months ago
Attempt 001
The first thing I do is move, then I kick down this door and wander around in the dark cave for a bit. I kill something.
I’m getting the hang of the dungeoneering lark; I break down another door. And another. I kill more enemies. This isn’t that difficult.
Then I notice my low health drop even lower as I fail to disarm a trap, I try to eat something but I have vampirism as a skill, I can’t restore my health with food, I have to attack a monster. Maybe through this door?
I try to kick it open. Instead I stub my toe, the door doesn’t budge and I fall down dead.
Attempt 002
This time I start with lockpicks and vampirism again, I charge round the map breaking through doors and killing anything that moves. After a few teleporters I find some stairs and head on down. There’s a Zomby down here. And something called Deth. Throwing caution to the wind I charge them and easily win.
Nothing can stop me now. Then I get ambushed by two Zombys and a Deth and die on floor 2.
Attempt 003
I decide to be more careful this time, I stick to the first floor and realise that’s a map in the top right corner as I work my way through and reveal more and more of the map, I’ll slowly build up my skills and won’t rush on ahead this time. This time I’m going to own at this game, Dredmor better watch out.
Then I open a door to a room full of Diggles, at least a dozen of them. I attempt to use Dragon’s Breath but only get a couple before they overwhelm me and get me back for eating their eggs. Ah well, maybe next time.
Dungeons of Dredmor is a randomly-generated turn-based dungeon-explorer game available on Steam for Mac for £3.49 and is well worth it. It makes trial and error fun.Tom Plays StarCraft 2 – Part 001
10 months ago
So, there I was watching a video of this StarCraft 2 game on YouTube.
Next minute I was in town buying a copy.
I really must learn to control this urge of mine to own shiny new games, all they do is grow the size of my pile of shame.
But there I was anyway, installing this infamous RTS onto my laptop, I mean I might as well try it out now, right?
StarCraft 2 is unusual in the world of videogames and many of its top players can earn a living by playing it, much in the same way top sports players can. StarCraft 2 has an incredibly competitive and deep online system and it’s one of those games you can garner a lot of respect through if you’re good at it. That doesn’t mean you have to be good at it, players are ranked in different ladders and leagues and throughout the course of the “season” you slowly work your way through the ranks and your skill level is determined by your position.
Of course, I’m a long way from even taking it online yet; I barely managed the tutorials which shows you where the mouse buttons are. But nonetheless it’s an intriguing game and one I look forward to taking online.
If I was confident enough, and spoke clearly and articulately enough I would join the ranks of the many on YouTube making commentaries on videos of such things. However I’m not, so I won’t. Instead I’ll keep my thoughts, adventures and opinions safely back here, hidden away on my blog where noone will read them and not out in the open waters of a site like YouTube.
I’ve not really played enough to to give an honest opinion but it does seem that, like a lot of good games, is surprisingly easy to learn.
I can only imagine it’s also surprisingly hard to master.
Tom
PC Gamer? If only I had the money!
I love the idea of PC gaming. Unfortunately our first PC was ollld. Even back when we got it it struggled, the few games of Operation Flashpoint I played back in the day didn’t go down too well with our dial-up connection.
Then I got a laptop which wasn’t much better.
And a few years after that, back in 2009, I got me a powerful computer, one of the best on the market. It could do crap I never even dreamt of before. Only it was a Mac.
Mac games were few and far between and as time went on I began to wonder if Operation Flashpoint would be the end of my PC gaming career.
Then, last year, Steam got released for Mac and I downloaded it. I bought Portal, got the humble indie bundle when it came out but all in all I didn’t actually own that much.
Then, fast forward to a week ago, Steam launched its summer sale. Every day a dozen or so games reduced to ridiculous prices. I mean, how could I resist?
I went through the list and had a mosey on through what was also out on Mac. I bought the few there were and played them all briefly, trying to earn summer camp achievements.
And so I repeated this for the next ten days, each evening I would go on, see what’s on sale and buy two or three games. And now I sit looking at my Steam game list, wondering how on earth I’ve ended up with over 70 games on there.
And I think back to my fears of not being able to game on my computer and wonder now rather how I’m going to game on my computer.
I mean, I don’t even have a mouse.
Tom
The time I built a Dry Dock in Minecraft…
I thought a dry dock in Minecraft would be cool. This is what happened…
