After a pause of three or so months (RL intruding) we finally managed to continue our SW campaign. When last we left off the Jedi had manged to liberate the members of the Rigelian Planetary Congress. Using the same secret tunnel leading from the Presidential Palace they used to enter. All that was left to do was bring the Congressmen from the Presidential Palace to the speeders they had left behind at a safe distance. Needless to say it didn't go according to plan. A droid army invaded. The First Minister turned out to be in the pocket for the Separatists. A Sith Lord arrived to negotiate - with lightsaber and Force lighting. Good fun.

This site has lots of nice 3D models of Star Wars ships (and some vehicles as well):

http://fractalsponge.net/index.htm

Ridley Scott...Aliens universe...sci-fi...evocative trailer...it COULD be good at least.

http://www.prometheus-movie.com/

Looking forward to it. Quite liked the reboot.

http://trekmovie.com/2012/01/14/paramount-officially-announces-star-trek-sequel-produciton-start/

Not sure if a general gaming blog was such a great idea...I do not feel like writing much...and given that I've moved most of the RPG stuff to separate blogs...I don't expect to be doing a lot of posting here. Not in the near future anyway.

It's been too long since last we played...definitely need to get a new session in soon. But every time we try something comes up! And with the heroes stranded in the wilderness of a distant world, just as its alien slave population rises in rebellion. And what on Rigelian are all those Jedi doing out in the woods? There aren't supposed to be ANY Jedi out there (save the PC of course).

And is Darth Tempos realy really dead?

And will E'Tan manage to get another dark side point?

Yeah, definitely need to play again!

I'm not saying that the PS3 is necessarily BETTER than, say the XBox 360, but it's the only console I own so...although it actually IS better you know...but that's sort of beside the point. The point of this post is that I haven't played a PC game in ages, not since my MoM post I think (which was many moons ago - aka 'ages').

The only computer-related stuff I've engaged in recently has been on my mobile (not  relevant here) and on the PS3. Been doing a bit of The Force Unleashed and Lego Star Wars, the Complete Saga. But more than anything I've been playing Ratchet & Clank! Not sure what appeals so - this is quite unlike the stuff I usually play, which is RPGs and strategy. But Ratchet & Clank is just...great fun. I can't pin it down more accurately than that.

It all started with this game; Quest for Booty. It's the second in a trilogy. I got it for free after Sony got hacked earlier this year, and for wont of anything better to do I started playing it. It's not really a full game. Very short. But packed with fun.

I already owned the last game in the trilogy, A Crack in Time. Got it along with the console last summer. Played it a little, but it never caught on. So it sat on my shelf for a while, until I got Quest. But once I was done with Quest I felt a need to play the first game...first...so Crack has to wait a tab bit longer.

So I trawled through some game stores and finally found the first game, Tools of Destruction. It was used and I got it for next to nothing. Now I've played through it and is ready to go back and finish A Crack in Time. Good times!

Someday, when I'm done with Ratchet and Clank, I might play some real games again :-)

Computer games used to be sooo much better than they are today...well, not really :-)

There are still good games being made, games that have sound and graphics and whatnot that are lightyears beyond what you had ten or fifteen years ago.

Old games can't compete with that. But they can compete when it come to gameplay, at least some of them can. Two types come to mind; simple, but addictive strategy games...and roleplaying games where dialogue and story is the focus, not combat or graphics. The former category includes things like Master of Orion 1 + 2 and Master of Magic. Not very complicated games, but you just can't stop hitting that 'Next Turn' button! And things like Planescape: Torment and Baldur's Gate might not be much to look at, but the gameplay is way beyond much of what is made within that genre today.

Anyway; the best place to get these old classics is GoG.com - literally filled to the edge with Good Old Games ;-) GoG will charge you a few pennies for the games, but there are some advantages - they generally include ALL expansions, patches etc. for their games, and they are optimized to run on modern-day Windows OS.

You can find many of the same games floating out there in pirated versions - on 'abandonware' sites like Abandonia.com. But why spend time hunting down a torrent, searching for patches, and trying to get it to work on your 64-bit Win 7 if all you are going to save is 5-10 USD? So not worth it. Granted there are many games which will run using DOSBox (a brilliant piece of software!), but others will not. Especially those pesky WIN95 games! Win 3.1 is often better...since many games of that era came packaged with a separate DOS version :-) But still so not worth it!

So go GoG and enjoy loads of fun titles!

I'm pretty much done with MoM for now. It was quite fun for a few hours, but although ever game is different it is also largely the same. Explore, expand, exterminate. Repeat.

Anyway, I found an active MoM forum here: http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=56

Also found a fan-made patch for the game - it actually does fix a number of crash issues, plus a number of in-game features: http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?t=4211

It made the AI harder to beat and also seemed to make neutral cities and marauding monsters actually mean something. Still, it's a fairly simple game, so once you've found a working strategy just stick to it and you'll win.

Look what I found!

An old classic from 1994...Master of Magic, turn-based strategy game in the Civ family. I had completely forgotten about this game...and how addictive simple turn-based strategy games can be.

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/master_of_magic

It can be yours for $5.99...that's almost nothing. And since GoG.com accepts PayPal you can be playing the game in about 2 minutes - that's how long downloading and installation is going to take you.

I'm currently playing as Moerdred the Death Mage, directing legions of Draconians out of my capital of Kal-Shaitar.

Great fun!

Tonight is Star Wars:  Clone Wars RPG night!

What will E'tan and E Leet screw up today?

Looking forward to it :)

Update to follow...

...every summer I boot up Master of Orion 2 for a few hours of fun!

Now you too can revisit this excellent strategy game too; available for download with the original MoO for next to nothing, ready to go on any Windows OS. The provider is Good Old Games - gog.com - a veritable treasure trove for those of us that like older games.

Actually I run the game from my original game files using DOSBox, my favorite DOS emulator. Perfect for use with your old games that you thought you'd never play again. Or maybe some games downloaded from Abandonia.com

Yeah, yeah. I'm just being nostalgic here, but honestly, some of those old games also provide some excellent gameplay.

I actually got around to watching the Mutant Chronicles movie the other day. It's been sitting on my self for a couple of weeks after I found it in a bargain bin (NOK 49). Expectations were not very great. This looked very much like a B-movie. But hey, it's a couple of hours of sci-fi and at a very low cost. I also know the Mutant Chronicles setting fairly well, although it's been quite a few years since last we met...

Overall I was rather pleasantly surprised. Sure, it was a B-movie. Big time. But I was never bored - at times I was well entertained. The special effects were decent and the action sequences not too bad. And although acting isn't high on the list of the film's strengths the band of unlikely heroes contained a rather interesting mix of characters (which any role-player would appreciate - I liked the Steiner fellow in particular).

Hot Asian Chick - she gets cut in two unfortunately

The story was pretty basic - Evil Machine lands on Earth 10.000 years ago sending forth mutant minions to destroy humanity. Heroic human tribes fight back and seal away Machine. Stupid humans forget about machine and wakes it up, letting monsters loose. End of the world imminent. Ancient religious order the has preserved lore about the Machine steps forth to gather unlikely heroes to make suicide raid to destroy machine and save humanity. Lots of quasi-religious stuff included. Faith and hope - that sort of thing. Not terribly good, but not incredibly bad either.

The films strongest point was atmosphere. It managed to convey a dark and gritty future pretty well. I think they overdid the steam-punk aspect a bit, but that's just me. I don't like steam-punk too much to begin with. But overall they had stayed consistent to a very bleak Sky Captain of Tomorrow/Steampunk imagery.

Where the movie didn't do so well was in the plot department. The basic story was basic and unimaginative, but the actual plot was so full of holes you could drive a car through them. My 'favorite' was near the end when the hero found his old army buddy who had been captured by the mutants six weeks before during their initial breakout...found him being dragged away by his captors to meet his mutating doom inside the Machine...presumably the muties had been dragging the mortally injured man around for six weeks. Rather inefficient...seeing as how they managed to overrun the entire world  - on foot  - during the course of those six weeks, including dragging back hordes of people to the Machine as to make new muties. But hey, maybe the one dragging 'old army bud' had gotten lost in the tunnels? That was daft enough to (almost) ruin the film for me (and it was a completely unnecessary scene too!).

Oh, and there is one more thing. The director took one look at the setting material, wiped his ass with it and then CAME UP WITH SOMETHING HARDLY RELATED TO MUTANT CHRONICLES AT ALL! That was something of a disappointment. It was like watching a 40K movie and have the God-Emperor alive and well and Chaos reduced to just some raving mutants. I suddenly understood why companies like GW protect their IP so vigorously...

In conclusion: If you know nothing about Mutant Chronicles to begin with and have a love of sci-fi/light action and can borrow the film from some one I'd recommend it.  Otherwise I won't recommend it - but I won't warn you NOT to see it. It wasn't all that bad and it's not like you get a lot of movies in that genre.

We did another session of Star Wars the other day. It was great fun. The sensible Cerean E Leet did his best to follow the master's wishes while the impetuous E'tan did all he could to screw up things. Like bringing Clone Troopers to what was to be a peaceful mission. Jumping out of an airspeeder, Anakin style, to attack a pursuing starfighter (good thing he had some Force Points to spend). Charging this Sith warrior, against the direct order of his master, only to botch the attack...go on to be hit twice for lots of damage...try throwing a grenade at her...only to have it returned by a little force push.  Time to run away!

So lookingforward to the continuation...

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