Potpourri Entry

I found out today there will be no more GameSetWatch. I am saddened! They had some of the neatest, quirkiest game coverage, and that's, for example, where I learned so much about Roguelikes and Dating sims.

Other than that, yeah, mostly playing Skyrim. Insert standard comment about how I'm 100 hours in and haven't done the main quest. I do have the super-duper-rare Thieves Guild Achievement for returning the Guild to its former glory, but man, that took forever. I think getting all the Achievements may actually be possible for me this time, but the marriage one makes me a little unsure because as it turns out, there's no marriageable khajiit. I'll either have to re-roll, or deal with marrying cross-species. I'm also a little nervous because a lot of the unfinished quests on my list are some that I have heard rumors are bugged, and I'd like to see a patch to fix some of those issues before trying to finish them.

If you follow me on Twitter, you might see I had made plans to go to Magfest. But, financially, I can't make too many trips next year, so I'm choosing to go to GDC. GDC is always a learning opportunity and this year I'll be covering it more from the press side. If you do make it to Magfest, I'm jealous! But, you know, GDC. I am also interested in PAX East, but it looks like press registration isn't open yet for that.

In other news... I might be working on an Interactive Fiction. I hope to have it ready for beta before the end of the year... they typically don't take a real long time to write for experts, but this is the first time I've tried to develop such a game with the actual intent to finish, as opposed to just messing around in Inform. I will say that it's a horror game, and thus might not be for everyone, but I'd love to have some people with experience willing to beta a first-time author.

In more IF news, I stumbled on this blog entry while on Thanksgiving Break saying that Andrew Plotkin was the one behind Cold Iron, a game I thought was well-written, but too short! A glimpse at the entry reveals why: the game itself wasn't really the point. Instead, it served as one arm of a meta-puzzle that stretched across four games, which myself and other reviewers simply failed to notice. I know I definitely didn't suspect. Cold Iron and Last Day of Summer did seem thematically related, but so far as things like having a man with an indescribable hat in each, I guess I just assumed that was an IF Meet or IF MUD in-joke and paid it no additional mind. Well, like the entry states, you don't really see things you aren't looking for.

Finally, I have one more article that I'm drafting that I hope will hit the net soon. And proposed a new feature for Tap-Repeatedly that I'm excited about.

So I'm doing a great job of pretending to be busy, even if logging 100 hours of a video game in the past few weeks.

A great start to the holiday season!

I Accidentally the Arch-mage of Winterhold

This contains complete spoilers for everything that happens in the Mage's College quests in Skyrim.

Thoughts on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, After Playing It 30 Hours

Over on Tap, the thread I started about Skyrim kind of exploded. Skyrim is obviously somewhat controversial and as a game of the size that it is, there is so much to discuss that a five-hour preview barely scratches the surface.  I should have realized that before posting, but I did anyway, because it's good to start a conversation and see what comes of it.  Now (as I said last entry), I'm trying to collect my thoughts in a more concrete way.

I'm far, far, from done with the game. Thirty hours is the point where a lot of people had deadlines and reviews to write, and like many players I've barely scratched the surface of the game's main quest in search of other profitable pursuits.

Words to follow may contain what some might call mechanical spoilers. I won't be talking about the story much, except for the tutorial.  However, some people define spoilers differently, and I believe this is a significant enough buffer for warning that I can now cut with abandon. Consider the next paragraph to be the actual start of my essay, so to speak.

IF Comp is over!

Not that you needed to hear it from me, but, the top-rated comp games have been announced, and you can go here to find out more. Congratulations to the winners... heck, to all the participants, because you made and released a game! The top-rated game turned out to be Taco Fiction, a game about which my own review said little primarily because I had so little to complain about. It's notable for NPCs, and a distinct personality for the PC, which are things I like.

In the mean time, I am trying to better collect my thoughts about another game.

A Thing that Happened in Skyrim

So last night like thousands of other people I was up a bit late playing Skyrim on Steam.

I was waiting around to --

...you know, a lot of people don't have this yet, so I'll buffer just a little and put in a spoiler tag. I'm not sure how to say what part of the game I'm in not to spoiler it, but, I'm maybe 15 hours of play in, and just wandering doing random things?

Now Playing Skyrim

I started playing Skyrim yesterday! Then I wrote a bit about it, at Tap-Repeatedly.

I might chronicle Cultural Cat Girl's adventures here in greater specificity, but only if I find the time between actually playing the game. I am a huge fan of taking screenshots, though.

IF Comp 2011: The Life (and Deaths) of Doctor M ... and final thoughts

The Life (and Deaths) of Doctor M is likely to be the last comp game that I review, because I can't figure out how to get Ted Paladin and the Case of the Abandoned House to run right, and the comp itself is coming to a close very soon.

I admit I had a small ulterior motive in reviewing comp games, other than to bring in some new and additional traffic to the blog. As I'm taking a high-end game art class through CG Society right now, I figured I wouldn't have the mental energy to devote to thinking about and writing about larger commercial game releases, and the bite-size comp games fit well in to my schedule in that regard. So, hopefully when the week is out, I'll have some lovely new art to display, and then I can look at the big games I've let pass me by recently like Batman: Arkham City, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and so on, in anticipation of Skyward Sword later this month. If you want to see my thoughts on any of that stuff, it may be here, or it may be on Tap-Repeatedly, where I intend to post some more Zelda-related writing and some other indie game writing rather soon.

Overall, this IF Comp ran the gamut for me: there were some strong games, and some not so much. If The Life (and Deaths) of Doctor M will indeed be the last game I play, it's a pretty good note to go out on: competently written, well-paced, and with a very interesting theme. It wasn't exactly perfect - some puzzles were a little too fiddly for me to get right away, needing some walkthrough help - but it's a game that will stick with me. After I had completed two hours and wasn't quite done, I wanted to return to it.

Here there be spoilers, then. If you don't click through yet, let me just say, thanks for stopping by and checking out my reviews.

IF Comp 2011: Cursed

I don't really like this very much, but it's taken me about an hour to convince myself that that is not my fault. My first instinct when something is fairly well-written is to blame myself instead of the design, but in the case of this game, it really probably is the design. This is kind of too bad, because it's pretty competent in a lot of other respects, but it's just hugely frustrating on so many levels.

Read on if you like.

IF Comp 2011: Playing Games

I actually played this one a few days ago, but it was so underwhelming I forgot to post about it. I'll spoil-cut anyway because I am polite.

IF Comp 2011: The Ship of Whimsy

Another untested game. I'll play it anyway and tell you what I think!

IF Comp 2011: Kerkerkruip

It's... it's a roguelike?

Challenge Accepted

IF Comp 2011: Fan Interference

I'm running down to the last few games, and I've played a pretty big block of them in the, let's say, "home stretch." Bad pun intended, since this is a game about baseball. You play as a baseball fan, and the object of the game is to interfere with a real, historical Cubs game so that the Cubs win.

IF Comp 2011: The Hours

This is a game about time travel. My review will contain swears this time!

IF Comp 2011: Professor Frank

Untested and kind of messy.

IF Comp 2011: Death of Schlig

OK, I'll be honest: I've been putting this one off. I clicked on it three times, but every time I was confronted with that so-wacky opening graphic, and kind of stared at it.  Then I saw that the protagonist was another detective, but that the whole thing was going to be wacky monkey cheese antics, and, well... It just took me a while to feel like playing it.

After doing so:

IF Comp 2011: Fog Convict

Sorry, this just isn't doing it for me.

IF Comp 2011: Calm

I feel like this is a little big for a comp game, or maybe I'm just bad at it. I feel like I was progressing, but had no idea how far I was from the end before I hit my time limit. Other impressions after the jump.