Weekend of Gaming Goodness

Posted by Stropp on February 25, 2008

For the first time in quite a while I pretty much spent the entire weekend playing games - apart from a little bit of television. I’ve been working on a number of projects lately which have drained time away from the games that I love. I was feeling a bit drained myself and figured some downtime was in order.

I picked up The Witcher late last week. I’d read a lot about it, pretty much all good, and had decided to pick up a copy in the next month or so. Instead, on the way home from work on Thursday evening, I dropped in to the game store and bought it.

The Witcher is a very impressive game. The combat was pretty unintuitive at first, but once I figured out how to fight, I picked it up pretty quickly. The graphics are absolutely gorgeous, the music atmospheric, and the voice acting is well done. It’s shaping up to be a great experience except for one thing.

Headhunters.

If you kill a guard, at some point a headhunter shows up when you exit a house with a warrant for your arrest. He’ll let you go if you give him a 1000 of the local currency, otherwise you have to fight. Since I had only 440 gold I had to fight. Bam. Down in one shot. Reload. Fight, manage to engage a few hits, only no damage. Bam Bam dead. Okay, now I make an offer of all my cash, no deal… fight bam bam… you guessed it dead.

Next stop, the forums. Here I find out the Headhunters are indestructible at all levels. The only way out it to pay them off or run away.

Since I didn’t have enough to pay him off, and since he was blocking my way, and since I couldn’t beat him, and since I had no idea when I killed the guard - the only option was to restart the game.

Back in the day, the game developer site Gamasutra had a regular column by a guy called Ernest Adams (I think) called Bad Game Developer - No Twinkie. In this column he put forward bad game design decisions that game developers make and which deserve being sent to bed without dessert. One of those game design sins is the hidden trap of doom (my term) which a player unknowingly steps into and effectively shuts any progress down.

A lot of these can simply be irreversible choices that gimp a character. I’ve previously encounter the ability to sell a quest item before it’s turned in thus preventing the completion of the quest. In this case CDProjekt (The Witcher developers) included a trap that stopped me dead.

Bad CDProjekt - No Twinkie!

Fortunately my weekend of gaming goodness didn’t stop there. I went over to some friends on Saturday night and played a board game. This was a game my friend downloaded from the web - it won awards apparently - and which my friend then built himself from bits and pieces.

It’s a hex based game of space colonization, a bit like the old 4X games like Master of Orion. The (4) players each take turns exploring, mining, and upgrading their planets and colonies until they get to a level where they can compete with each other.

It’s one of these games that takes ages to play. We ended up not finishing simply because it got too late. Lots of fun was had anyway - especially with silly comments like "It’s space Jim but not as we know it." Cliched I know, but fun.

And that’s not all.

After reading a number of blog posts about Everquest 2 and the latest updates, I got a bit nostalgic and logged back in. I purchased the Rise of Kunark expansion because I specifically wanted to have a look at the Sarnak.

After the inevitable download, I was ready to play. I created a Sarnak Shadownight called SSirius. Here he is, click on the image to enlarge it.

I have to say, playing this guy has been some of the most fun I’ve had with EQ2. The Sarnak quests on Timorous Deep are very well though out setting up a pretty decent story arc.

I’ve been told that the quests on Timorous Deep will take me right through to level 20.

And that’s another thing. It feel like I’ve been flying through the levels. After about ten hours of /played, I’ve already reached level 15. I reckon that’s the fastest I’ve progressed in Everquest 2. I’m not sure what happens after 20 though.

The setting for the Sarnak has something of an eastern feel to it. It also feels like an honor bound society where respect is shown. Something I haven’t noticed in the other evil races, especially those that start in Freeport.

And that was my thoroughly gaming packed weekend. How was yours?

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