We’re here again, the inevitable period where all the producers loose interest and the project is on its last legs, or as a real nerd would put it;-
Your Blog is Afflicted by Neglect.
Neglect deals -10 Interest to Your Blog.
Neglect deals -10 Interest to Your Blog.
Your Blog Dies.
Well, I don’t know what to say. I had exams, followed by an intense period of gaming. I never came across anything I considered to warrant an entry, but I figure I’ll get one good post down before this beast dies.
In case you’re wondering, Mark hasn’t officially quit, but we can consider his contributions on Hold. Other James has tried to post a few times, but the Blog hates him. If this blog actually goes under (through mediated consent) I will set up shop on a WordPress blog and look into writing content for a few sites I’ve become affiliated with.
But thats enough of that.
What have I been up to? I hear you asking, I’ve been playing some games I never tried first time round. Then returning to my roots with some classic TBS games and of course some decent doses of World of Warcraft.
I’ve been playing four games in particular over the recent weeks, listed in order of recent play:-
You may remember I mentioned purchasing Double Agent a short while ago, I rated it fairly highly so far as the Single Player game went, but I looked over the Cooperative play. I took it to other James’ to lend it to him, so we could also get some of the cooperative in, and i’ll tell you now. It is easily as good as the singleplayer, possibly one of the best Cooperative modes ever included.
Its designed to integrate into the main plot, you’re essentially “Those guys that helped Sam Fisher on level X to do Y” and it is done very very well. Certain modifications have been made to make you require 2 people, besides the obvious 2-player climbs there are also changes to the electronic disabler built into the pistol so it has to be held on to work, perfect for covering one another across protected hallways.
It isn’t without its annoyances though, key cards are an absolute nightmare, often you have to run back through the level - past all those cameras / turrets again - just to grab a key card you mssed, in a completely retarded place, that you had little/no reason to go to. Also, less of a criticism, but more of an opinion: The Back-to-Back climb is just Gay. Super Gay. Ultra Gay. Quite frankly:
[2: Trade][Sam Fisher]: wtb Grappling Hook
[2: Trade][Sam Fisher]: On AH Now: Noob Partner.
Gun, a western free-roam created by Neversoft and clearly inspired by Grand Theft Auto with Bullet-time and Indiands thrown in for good measure. Sound Disasterous? Thats what I thought when I first saw trailers for it, and so I disregarded it and moved on to greener pastures.p>
My mistake. Gun (’Gun’ or GUN, its a hard choice) is a sound game, fun from the start with reasonable and intuitive controls. There isn’t really a moment where it felt undoable or poorly designed. You never got burdened with ammo worries or overly harsh time constraints, unless you chose to do the optional (although highly recommended) Side Missions.
The side missions included Poker, courier work, ranching and other (slightly more generic) missions. They’re all delightfully simple, whilst remaining very charming and fun to do. The core story missions are each quite original, although usally involving: Ride to A, Shoot B, Rescue C.
Estimated play time is 8 Hours, for a slow person. On Medium it took me little over 6 Hours, 100% Completion. That is my only true criticism, its short lived. Its polished, clever and fun. I highly recommend it.
Score: 85%
Summary: Equally as much fun as Cowboys and Indians from your child hood. It really is everything it says on the tin. However, its not an original concept and looses serious points for having no new features.
I’m not sure what led me onto my next thing, but I started looking at decompilers, to the end of decompiling the Master of Magic executables. You see, I was wondering how hard it could possibly be to make it Windows compatible. I gave up on that quickly and just gave Dosbox another pop, it didn’t work well last time.
Perfect. It worked Perfect. And I suck at it, but i’ve been reliving those days with my Super City Levelling heroes.
After that I returned to another classic love, Colonization, theoretically a step in another direction with Civilization. Great fun, sound working - albeit the music was missing. I’ll link the sites you need to visit to enjoy it yourself at the end of the post, be sure to check them out.
Well, I’m nearing the end of my post and I don’t know whats left to add. If we decide to shut-down altogether I will post and say so, but if anyone actually reads this, nows the time to show your support.
Have a nice time,
JamesR
Links
Dosbox Downloads (I recommend 16,000+ Cycles for MoM)
d-Fend Downloads
Master of Magic Download (requires Dosbox to play on Windows XP)
Colonization Download (Works with XP though you may need to download a gfx .dll)
For Sound on MoM, set the Dosbox emulator settings, then run install.exe and set the same sound configuration there. If you’ve done it correctly running magic.exe should work with sound.
