I've hard a hard time motivating myself to get some of my larger projects done over the last few months, but I think I'm finally coming out of it. I was able to finish a lot of pictures I started but never finished over the past few days, including this one:

Area 50.5 "Alternate Ending"

I just finished playing I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.



I think I need to be alone for a while.



That is all.

Today's time on Impressive Title was one of extreme contrasts.

First I come within about two hits of hitting the much sought-after Great Wildebeest when it wounds me. As I'm recovering, my connection times out and it vanishes.

But then I find and successfully kill the not as sought-after but still pretty impressive Overgrown Gazelle, so everything's fine.

Then, after a very long time searching for a Dire Fennec Fox to tame, I finally find one and lead it away from the other players. As I'm trying to tame it, another character appears. I stand between him/her and the fox, frantically typing out "Please don't kill this fox!". He/she kills it anyway.

Then I get obtain of the rarest items in the game from an animal that I didn't think even dropped items when killed.

So all in all, the negative moments seem to balance out the positive ones to the point where this was a fairly neutral IT day.

I captured this video of Xandra with a glitchy gazelle on Impressive Title, and it was so mind-explodingly cute that I had to share it here.

One evening, feeling utterly bored and not feeling like doing anything productive, I said to myself, "All right, I've played The Lion King PC game enough times to win it with my eyes closed. I want to play another action game with a non-human, quadruped protagonist."

After much searching, I found what I was looking for...

( Read more... )

I'm researching and hunting down games in preparation for Adventure: The Inside Job 2, as far off in the future as that game's completion might be. I'll be branching out into some new genres in this game, one of which is the action-adventure "hybrid" genre, and one of the games of that type that I've located is called a title from the mid-90's called Bermuda Syndrome.

The game's story? American World War II pilot goes through a wormhole into a parallel universe, accidentally saves sexy virgin princess from being sacrificed to a Tyrannosaurus rex, befriends her, then has to make his way through about 280 screens full of various prehistoric monsters, all of which he has to kill (as well as solve a few puzzles along the way).

Though there is a lot of action and combat in this game, it's not entirely overwhelming, and there are definite adventure game elements in it -- some problem solving is required to get across a crocodile-infested river, and a lot of lever-flipping is required to get through an ancient temple or two, but the "blow something away, progress to next screen, blow something else away" routine got a bit tedious after a while, especially since a lot of care had gone into the design of these dinos and I felt a bit bad about killing them -- most of them were actual dinosaur species, not just random scaly hodgepodges.

The thing I found most interesting about this game is the main character responsible for killing at least one of every form of life in this world. He's a muscular, crass, stubborn man, a true "ugly American", and his scantily clad female companion (who he kisses about seventeen times over the course of the game) is wearing what looks like a red bathing suit with one of her bosoms exposed for all the world to see. His name? Jack Thompson.

Not to be confused with this guy.

I am much amused by the irony.

My "'Freddy Pharkas, Frontier Pharmacist' Outtakes" video on YouTube got spammed by a user named "canadianpharmacyshop", advertising cheap Canadian prescription drugs.

Good golly gosh, spam that doesn't seem all that out of place! Amazing.

My informal review of Toonstruck...yet another game that I wish I hadn't put off until now.

Toonstruck is a 1996 adventure game starring Christopher Lloyd of "Back to the Future" fame, in which he plays a down-on-his-luck cartoonist named Drew Blanc (yes, there is much punnage in this game) who finds himself in a land populated entirely by cartoons, many of his own creation. They and their world are mostly the wacky Loony Toons type, but there are also nauseatingly sweet toons at one extreme and twisted, sinister ones at the other. The game is in many ways similar to "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" but it has its own distinct flavor as well...( continued behind cut )

I actually wrote this about a week ago, but I waited until I had gotten a *cough, ahem* LEGAL copy of Toonstruck before spewing my appreciation for it all over the world. If you want to get a good look at the game without resorting to any *hack, wheeze* ILLEGAL methods, do a search for "Toonstruck" on YouTube. There's a playthrough of it posted there (although the sound is a tad out of sync on some of the videos).

Lastly, the theme of this game got me thinking...how about a game or a movie of some kind where a character from a poorly done 3D animated flick gets transported into one of the 2D animated masterpieces of yesteryear, full of very displeased 2D characters? Tee-hee.

I found out the hard way that recording old cassettes in PlusDeck is a risky game, because 30-year-old tape has a habit of breaking and getting slurped up by PlusDeck's spooling mechanism. Twice now I've ejected a cassette from PlusDeck and found 60 minutes' worth of tape happily coiled inside. Fortunately, I've been able to pull the tape out with very few injuries to it on both occaisions and was able to fix and transplant the tape easily. I also discovered a cassette that was 60 minutes long on each side, nearly twice as long as the standard CD. Pretty impressive (I thought).

Over the past few months I've been writing fanfic again. After posting those potential sequel ideas to KQ9:IT⁴ almost a year ago, I've finally given in and started writing. The odd thing is, not only am I writing both sequels at the same time, but I started work on the second sequel first, and it's still closer to being finished than the first sequel (I've completed 32 pages of Sequel #1 and 57 pages of Sequel #2). This means I'll probably have to reread Sequel #2 and squeeze in references to Sequel #1 whenever they are appropriate. For now, I'm just making vague allusions to Sequel #1 and hoping that I don't decide to give Sequel #1 a massive plot overhaul in the near future.

I wish I could get these stories done faster, but once again, my inflamed wrists are impeding my efforts. However, I'm doing everything I an not to overexert them (for instance, I'm typing this with my fingers upside down in the hopes of stretching their muscles in the opposite direction). Sure, all this time and effort might have been better spent writing a massive Anime-LoTR-PoTC-slash-crossover fic, which would certainly be much more popular, but popularity and me never have really gotten along.

And lastly, I was listening to this unused sound clip of Roger Wilco from Space Quest 6, and suddenly realized that there were voices in the background. Slightly creepy.

(And speaking of SQ6 - Memorable Moments and Lines from SQ6, Part II. Also, a similar compilation of SQ4 clips and the dang cool intro from Lighthouse: The Dark Being.)

Yes, I really am typing this with my palms facing up. Try it, it's neat.

This is the funniest Monkey Island video I've seen in years. Don't watch this in a library, a computer lab or anywhere else where your laughter might risk disturbing people!

I mentioned that I liked "A Tale of Two Kingdoms" a lot. In fact, I liked it enough to do some fanart of it.

I also decided to upload this little bit of shameless self-promotion, it being 09-09 today.

Ho boy...

I've just finished playing what has to be the most amazingly wonderful freeware fantasy adventure game I've ever downloaded, and even though it has abused my brain in a number of ways, I have to play it again. Why? Because this is also one of the most nonlinear games I've grappled with, and there are dozens of alternate solutions and sidequests that I haven't explored yet. I think some adventure gamers must have masochistic tendencies...why else do we put ourselves through such pain in order to achieve pleasure?

Despite the simple graphics and lack of voice acting, this game has one of the most intricate, multilayered storylines I've encountered in an adventure game. The 2D brackgrounds are also reminiscent of classic Sierra/LucasArts adventures, and the sneaky references to those games amused me to no end ("You don't want to climb down the well. There may be a dragon down there!").

To those of you who were having trouble completing Area 50.5, you might want to avoid this game, for it leaves the former in the dust, not only in extreme difficulty, but everything else, and to all adventure gamers who enjoy games in the fantasy genre, this is truly worth the download:

A Tale of Two Kingdoms

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On a somewhat unrelated note, I suddenly feel motivated enough to start work on several projects that have been on hold for months -- I was recently up the entire night working on a fanfic. It's as if being out of town and away from the computer for a week has caused my creativity to accumulate and is now finally being released.

I've spent the past few weeks working on a Flash adventure game. It's a very short game, but it's taking a very long time to complete, due to my inexperience with Flash. It should be completed sometime this month, so get ready for 2D animations and semi-2D backgrounds, an outlandish plot, and some really obscure in-jokes.

The name of the game is Area 50.5.

Well, I finally caved in and started uploading media I didn't personally create to YouTube. Hopefully I won't be banned immediately. And I suddenly realised that the rules on the Upload page said not to upload TV shows, music videos, music concerts, or commercials you didn't create yourself...but they didn't say not to upload video captures from computer games. Heh...heh...don't hurt me.

Memorable Moments and Lines from Space Quest 6

Freddy Pharkas, Frontier Pharmacist Outtakes

I started playing the 2006 adventure game Paradise last night...and darn it, if it isn't like Syberia all over again, in the sense that it's like a 3rd-person Myst. What's the point in having a character walking all over these beautiful, detailed landscapes if she has no commentary to make about her surroundings? Does this character think these bizarre, insanely illogical machines I keep finding are fascinating products of engineering or impractically complex pieces of junk?

The only way I gain insight into the protagonist's personality is through her conversations with other characters, and there's just something about the dialogue in Benoit Sokal's games that just seems the tiniest bit "off". You can tell the lines have been translated from another language. And, since this game is in 3D, it's been having its share of bizarre bugs that 2D games seldom provided us with. Once, one of the non-player characters, who spends a lot of time on her knees, scrubbing a large floor, whizzed along the floor of one room in her "scrubbing position" and out a door!

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On the same subject, I was listening to The Fourth Tower of Inverness today...and I realized that that radio drama would make a great adventure game. There's little action (no fighting or violence in any form, however), yet lots of mystery, the story moves along well, there's lots of dialogue, and plenty of "side quests" (Jack's search for the book that describes the fourth tower, being directed to one person after another, finding out what's going on by seeking out and talking to various people, exploring the grounds).

There are also parts of the story where Jack has to improvise by creating a pole to vault over a wall with out of a sapling, figure out how to reach the fourth tower (through a series of doors disguised as mirrors) bridge a twelve-foot gap barring him from his goal, borrow items from another person in order to succeed in his next goal (traversing a hedge maze, of all things), and walk around carrying seemingly impractical items (such as two heavy bags filled with nickels and dimes). All this stuff seems to scream "adventure game" to me, and I seriously doubt Fourth Tower would make a very good movie (though there has been a rumor that it might become one, which I dread a bit).

First, the bad news (well, for me, at least):
A Vampyre Story (from Autumn Moon entertainment, a company formed of ex-LucasArts employees) isn't going to be done with 2D animation (which the first screenshots of it led me to believe), so I'm a little peeved about that.

And now, the good news:
Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars (Circle of Blood in the American version) is going to be made into a movie! This is probably one of the first movie adaptations of an adventure game (unless you count Pirates of the Caribbean as an "adaptation" of Monkey Island). Here's hoping that they don't get shot down or screw it up (because the Broken Sword games had a tendency to be a bit cheesy at times).

EDIT: Waaait a minute..."Legendary video game creator Charles Cecil ('The Da Vinci Code,' 'Beneath the Steel Blue Sky')"??? That had better be a video game with a very similar name to the Legend game "Beneath a Steel Sky"...

I was unpacking some boxes of groceries at work today, and while I was leaning over them, I hear a very young voice say, "Mommy, is that a boy or a girl?"

I look up to see a three- or four-year-old girl sitting in a shopping cart directly in front of me (her mother, it turns out, was behind me, further down the aisle), and it's obvious that the question she just asked was about me. Man (no pun intended), am I that masculine that even long hair isn't enough for people to tell what I am at first glance?
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It looks like California is finally getting that rain that was forecast. After four days of perpetual gloom, it's about time.
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And, with the discovery of two more programs that will not work on WinXP anymore, despite endless tweaking, my desire to own a wonderfully outdated PC with Win3.11 or Win95 on it has become even stronger. Darn it to heck, I want to play Eyewitness Virtual Reality Bird! Whine, whine, complain, seethe, sulk.

After several months of holding back, I finally bought Dreamfall. And boy, does it ever live up to its predecessor. The graphics, the characters and the story draw you in so strongly that it's tough to tear yourself away.

There are a few issues I'm having with the game, the biggest one being the action element. I knew this was an action/adventure "hybrid" when I bought this, and at least there are alternate ways around the combat sequences (which, after countless tries, I still suck at), but those ways involve skeaking around, timed sequences and a touch more nervous tension than I can willingly stand. It's hard to become immersed in worlds like the ones in Dreamfall's prequel (The Longest Journey) when there are mutants or monsters roaming around.

My second beef is with Dreamfall's interface. One of the problems I've had with 3D adventure games is that they have a very steep learning curve when it comes to their interfaces. Even after playing Dreamfall for five hours, I still have problems with the interface. In The Longest Journey, the backgrounds were pre-rendered, but the characters were rendered in real time. If you wanted to interact with something, you'd pan the mouse around on the screen until you found an object that "highlights" when you move your mouse over it, then click on it to reveal a set of actions available for that object (look, take, talk etc.). In Dreamfall, everything is rendered in real time, creating a truly 3D world. If you want to interact with something in Dreamfall, you have to carefully turn your character around using the arrow keys, waiting for the camera (positioned directly behind your character) to adjust to each movement, then click the right mouse button to lock the camera and activate a blue field that you move by dragging the mouse, pan around the scene with the field in the hopes of finding something interactive, then click on in to reveal its available actions. It makes the interface for Grim Fandango seem freakin' simple.

It took me almost ten minutes to get accustomed to the crazy camera movements. Moving your character the slightest bit makes the camera swing wildly around to stay aligned with the character. This is very jarring, especially in one scene where one of your characters is climbing a ladder (misspelled "latter" in one of its descriptions. :D) and the camera is positioned directly above her, looking down. As she climbs, her body swings from side to side, causing the camera to rock to and fro so violently, it's as if someone were rapidly slapping the sides of the cameraman's head.

Your lack of control over the camera makes it especially difficult in the combat sequences. Oftentimes, the camera will slowly pan around until you can barely see your own character, or bank so wildly that you can't focus on your opponent. If the camera were stationary, the combat sequences would be difficult enough, but as it is, some of them are almost impossible.

There are probably some options for a less crazy point-of-view than this one, but I haven't had the time to try them out. At least the story and atmosphere compensate for the problematic interface and action elements (why, Ragnar, WHY?).

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I've also been relistening to the Jack Flanders story Do That in Real Life? for the first time in years. The story came out in 2003, and it's set in New Orleans. At one point the two main characters, Jack and Mojo, are talking about the city's location, and how, in Mojo's words, "some people fear that one day, a big hurricane is gonna come and knock those levees flat, and we'll be all in over our heads." He then segues into how the people of Bukatingi, Sumatra, are living at the foot of two volcanoes, one of which (Mount Merapi) is active and could go off any day.

It seems like such a short time for both of those disasters to come to pass.

This King’s Quest project has taken me more than seven years to reach this current point. It may not be much to show for my efforts, but I’m glad I’ve finally gotten the nerve to share it with the rest of the fandom:

King’s Quest IX: It Takes Two to Tangle

( A blurb I wrote on the subject )

You know your day can't be going that bad when you realise that what you thought was a minor breakout on your face is actually poison oak after your lunch break rather than first thing in the morning.

And maybe it's just me, but Roger Wilco seems to have eyes like a Fremen in Hoyle 1. Sure, there's only so much you can do in 16-color SCI, but he's the only character whose eyes are entirely blue -- including the whites. And that's not normal.