Overlord, Part 3

So,, I'm up to the first moral choice. The options are put the food supply on the platform so the villagers can take it to Spree, the village.

Problem is, I can't seem to get the minions to go that little bit further to put the food supply onto the platform, so it seems the only way to finish the stage is to take the food supply.

Why not just tell me to do that, Overlord? Why must you make it so difficult?

EDIT

Oooohhh, I get it, I'm supposed to literally drop the food onto the platform.

Would have been nice to have that in a little more detail.

Overlord, Part 2

For Christ sakes.

I'm supposed to be some evil conquering Overlord, not a fricking errand boy for a couple of farmers.

And I shouldn't have to prove myself to these bastards; why can't I just order my imps to kill the two farmers and burn down the palisade wall they've erected in front of the village?

Another gripe I have is you - the 'Overlord', if you could even call yourself that. You're slower than the sheep in the beginning of the game, and you can't attack very fast, so you have to have your imps do everything.

Problem is, the method for controling your imps feels about as smooth and seemless as a cadaver going through a woodchipper.

To control your minions - every one of them - you must hold down both mouse buttons and move the cursor around (which has helpfully dissapeared) and the minions don't really take your mouse moving as a direct command.

It's a stupid, stupid way to do it.

More later...

First Impressions: Overlord

(It was something to do with the DNS server, which was easily fixed. Thanks for your concern.)

Sooooo... Overlord.

Originally, I thought I was going to play a little game of 'King Arthas and his Scourge minions' or something of that nature, something kind of like an RTS and only controlling the 'Overlord' when I want to or when some idiot hero decides to take me on.

Not doing all the bloody work myself. Where's my legion of demonic minions? Where's the towering infernals, the huge dreadlords? the thousands of imps and lesser demonkin?

Right now, it's just me and a bunch of goblin-like imps with qeustionable intelligence.

Who knows. Maybe I'll grow to like it, but I'm just dissapointed that I'm a 'hero' in my own right, and not King Arthas.

More later...

Reset, part 2

So, it happened.

Kind of dissapointed, though. It's going to take a while for me to get everything back up and to reconfigure everything.

Plus I can't get through to The Escapist website. Something to do with our DNS, possibly.

Reset

Today I bid farewell to someone special.

He has been there, comforting me in times of need, making me laugh, cry, and sometimes enraging me to the point of murder.

But I forgive that. I forgive him for being a bit slow, because we're convinced he has a nasty infection, brought on by taking something he shouldn't have.

I blink back tears as I write this. It isn't easy for me to say goodbye to a friend so special as this one.

I'll hold his funeral in silence before he goes.

I'll miss him. He wasn't the brightest, but he was a good- no, great friend.

I'll miss you, laptop.

... *clears throat*

In all seriousness, there's something on my laptop my old school put on there (something to do with networking) and it's screwing with OUR networking at home, so we're nuking him (uninstalling the operating system).

We only just found the Dell box the laptop came in, so when we nuke him we can reinstall him with everything he came with when he started.

So, little work done today - mostly copying files, music, and other crap onto flash disks. I'll probably do something 'work' related. I'm getting my head into accouting, at the moment.

MDK

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have found out something amazing.

MDK runs on my computer.

That might not sound like much until you hear that Zdoom won't.
Then it sounds pretty amazing.

First thing's first; mess around with the keyboard controls. Arrow keys? Gone. Now runs with WASD controls. Also messing around with the controls for the sniper helm, jump, and a few other things... done.

Leap into the first level; didn't crash. Good sign. I have to remind myself that the level hasn't actually started yet, but I'm too busy being amazed to worry about it.

Jump into the start of the level, grab the health boost and set off to kill some evil robot things, or at least i would if the mouse didn't come up.

Like most PC FPS gamers, I'm used to handling the mouse. I basically grew up on Half-Life (the first one), so the whole WASD to move/space for jump, C for crouch/mouse to aim and fire has been drilled into my mind, and like Nazi propaganda you can't ever get that sort of thing out.

So the notion of playing MDK without the mouse at all was a bit disturbing, especially since I knew the mouse could be reconfigured for today's FPS gamers.

I was planning to do 'work' today (I dread the word; 'Work' is something you'd rather not be doing but have to anyway, and that's no way to live) but I just can't get my mind of it and how incredibly amazing it is.

Speaking of amazing, it's amazing how many people bicker/ed over the title.
MDK.
It could stand for a bunch of things. Shiny wasn't telling, the bastards, so everybody had to make up their own assumptions.

I, personally, choose to believe its
Mission: Deliver Kindness (which is the most hinted)
But there are many other names for it;

Murder Death Kill
Max, Doctor, Kurt (the three main characters)
Mother's Day Kisses (since the game was released on Mother's Day)
And many more...

I'll probably write some sort of review for MDK in the not so distant future. Don't be surprised if it's a little gushy - I loved that game since I was a child, and it's right up there with HOMAM3 as my favourite nostalgic game ever.

WoW Gas Mask

Anybody who's been around the Howling Fjord as a Horde character would have probably noticed all these Forsaken running around wearing gas masks.

Gas. Masks.
With fricken' spikes on the filters, and translucent green bulbous eye pieces.

And I know what went through your mind when you saw those gas masks:
'I needs to get me one of them'.

Problem is, you can't buy it. It's not even a drop, as far as I can tell. And if it is, it's probably so low [00000000000.01% drop rate] that nobody's ever found it.

No problem, you say to yourself. I'll just look it up on the WMV.
but it isn't there.
You try everything - Gas, Mask, Forsaken, Plague... nothing yields any desired results.

Even worse, you can actually find it inside WMV [Item > Objectcomponents > head > helm_mask_plague_???, last three is race and gender], but you can't equip it to a character!

It's tragic - I know somehow the guys at WoW did it, so wouldn't it make sense that WMV can do it? I thought so, but apparently not!

Geocities!

Well, Geocities is shutting down. Yesterday, actually.
And thank christ, too.

Geocities was nothing more than a place for people with limited intelligence to post their opinions on things they didn't understand.
If not, it was a file hoster, or perhaps a propaganda site. I'm sure when Yahoo! made Geocities they didn't realise it would become such a cesspool of arrogance and unintelligence.

Unless they did, and that was their evil plan all along.

XKCD has a Geocity style layout to commemorate it shutting down (or something like that). The worst part is that it isn't trying to take it out of proportion - that's exactly what the sites looked like.

The missing links, the terrible background, the f&@%ing BLINK tag, blue links on black, missing images... someone who knew what the hell they were doing when it came to web design would take one look at a Geocities page and want to kill themselves.

Yahtzee's Travel Logs and Egoraptor

If you haven't read this, you must do so now. If not for me, than for Yahtzee.

yes, I know I'm about three years behind the date it was posted, but read it anyway.
Now.

EDIT
Also, Egoraptor.

Down with the Sickness

(I wrote this about a week ago and only now got around to posting it.)

So... I've been feeling like crap (a nice way of putting it) for the past week and a bit. So, in light of my situation, I have decided to finally reveal my tricks of the trade.

Illness and how to use it: A ROAHSG Special

Let's face it; any illness of any description usually isn't fun. The flu, common cold, whatever, is especially aggravating.

I've had a bunch of these 'colds', and thus, I've racked up much experience in the field of being sick, that is, having a cold.

So, let me share with you how you too can properly take advantage of this double-edged sword that is the Flu.

First things first: Getting It.
(Haha he said 'getting it' GROW UP)

Some of you may think that it's easy getting a cold. But I spend a lot of time wearing very little in the way of a second layer of clothing, even during winter, so you can't just wear a t-shirt and shorts and expect anything, except odd looks from people in the street.

I can't give you much advice on this. The best way to get a cold is to wait for a cold snap (that is, a cold period overnight) or get it from a co-worker/school student.

The 'Cold Snap' business generally happens over winter. In fact, I guarantee it to happen over winter.
When you go to sleep, wear something light and turn electric blankets off.

Making Sure It Doesn't Get Away

So, I assume you woke up with some sort of throat problem or nose problem.
GREAT.
Now, I hope you've got something you can do in a secluded part of the house that's sometimes cold because if you don't do something now, that bastard's gonna slip away. I recommend a computer, because the Internet can keep one entertained for a while.

Arguably, once you have the cold, you've got it. But I like to make sure.
Once that's over with, time to move on to:

The Early Game

The 'Early Game' is the first day or so. Usually, you (or your parents) are trying to get yourself better. Generally, this is futile.
You're already sick, and no amount of anti-cold drops or liquid is going to make that go away.

So, you're screwed. But don't panic; this can work for you if you play your cards right.

The Mid Game

The 'Mid Game' is everything up to a few days before it goes away completely. And this is where you can really put my strategies to work.

STRAT #1: You're going to be mentally unable to do much except menial tasks, due to your fatigue. So, that gives you a chance to a) get others to do your work and b) not do anything (even play games!). But this is OK. Your family/flatmates/whatever probably won't mind/care, just as long as they don't catch your filthy disease.

STRAT #2: Keeping your cold isn't that hard. Simply don't wear too many layers of clothing and keep your chest cold (or un-warm).

STRAT #3: Your nose will, and this can't be avoided, block up. You may be trying to fix it with something from Vicks.

Let me tell you a story.

While I was in bed, I thought about why a nose would be blocked in the first place. Well, I chanced across nose hairs. Makes sense, right? Snot gets caught up in the nose and blocks the entire thing up. Well, I, in my infinite wisdom, to try to pull a few out. (THIS IS STUPID AND EXTREMELY PAINFUL)

Well, I could breathe through my nose, at least once the small concentrated dose of pain had finished (usually 3 to 4 seconds for the initial, six or seven seconds for it to go), if only for a few moments before it closed over again. Still, this can be seen as an acceptable sacrifice.

STRAT #4: Coughing will happen eventually, usually around the 'pre End Game' phase.
You can get the most out of coughing by standing (or lying) straight up (this includes your neck). Doing this will give your cough a gravely sound to it, the kind people take one listen to and go 'that can't be good'.
And that's exactly what you want.

The Pre-End Game

Around this time you'll notice yourself loosing your 'crap' feeling, plus you'll be blowing your nose less often. Nothing I can help you with now, except to use Strat #2 and #4 as often as possible to get the most out of it.

The End Game

That's it. The End Game is the period of time it takes to completely get over the sick period without any attempt to extend it. Once you hit the Pre-End Game mark, it's time to give it up.


So, that's it. After the End Game, you should be ready to start work or school again.
Yaaaaay.
On the plus side, I get to play B: AA again on the good computer (which dad uses for work), and install a few other games (Rainbow 6: Vegas, Timeshift and Halo 2 are on my list. Stay tuned.)

Ressurection Sickness

Seriously.

Rezo-F&(*!ng-rection Sickness.

It makes you unable to actually play the game (75% reduction to all stats), gives your armour a big helping of durability damage, and it's incurable. Can't get rid of it until it's time is up, which is 1 minute for each level after ten and caps at ten minutes, so level 20+ is going to have ten minutes of not playing the game.

Which is fine. I can deal with that. What I CAN'T deal with is when, even at a tavern, you can't sleep it off. Come on, Blizzard! You usually get these things right, why can't you do the same with this? You are forced to not play the character for ten minutes while the frickin' Rez Sickness goes away. THe only class that could possibly go up against a creature their level and still walk away while afflicted with the cursed Rez Sickness is a blood spec Death Knight.

Seriously, though. Must we be forced to not play the game for ten minutes? We can't go onto another character and play while we wait, because when we get back it hasn't gone away, lingering on your character's body like a bad smell.

Slaughter!

Just got my @$% handed to me on a saronite platter when this ragtag party and I ventured into the Nexus. Of course, I signed up because I WANTSTED MY TUNDRA PAULDRONS.

But it was not to be. We kept getting wiped at the first boss (some Blood Elf mage thing) and our leader eventually disbanded the party.

Naturally, they blamed it on me, which was a bi unfair. If we had had a competent healer, nay, a healer AT ALL it would have been fine but NOOOOOO.

Death Knights and Music-sountracks

First things first, the frickin' Horse quest for the Death Knights.

Today just wasn't my day, I guess. I kept getting 'roped' by the stable keeper and forced off my horse and melee'd by him, and of course he had to be elite. Of course, you can't do it unless you've been spotted, so you have to do it juuuust in range and then sprint out and hope to god there are no Scarlet Infantry or Captians ready to give you a nice helping of Dazed (50% movement reduction).
I can't help thinking that Blizzard just made it unnecessarily difficult, unless I'm wrong and you can, in fact, evade that elite horse riding bastard.

And while I'm on the subject, what the hell is up with the outrageously high prices of the epic riding training? I understand that it was priced when Burning Crusade came out, and it was a pretty good guess that all those level 70's were brimming with gold, it those days are now over. I imagine most players will never see themselves riding their epic flying mounts, 'specially not in Northrend. Let's look at how much it costs, counting honoured reputation, to get the whole flying mount package.

assuming you have both previous levels of riding;
Expert: lvl 60, 225 gold. (remember, with honoured rep)
Artisan (epic): lvl 70, 4500 gold.
Cold Weather Flying (flying in Northrend): 1000 gold (cannot be reduced by rep prices).
The epic mount itself: 95 gold.
Total: 5820 gold.

That is a lot of gold, even for someone who works the auction house (not counting those people who are so good it at that they make thousands every day). The worst part is that Blizzard recently reduced the level requirement and price for ground mounts, but seemed to ignore the expert and artisan levels. Just seems like a bit much.

On a lighter note, I've been thoroughly enjoying the World of Goo Soundtrack, availible for download here. Well, not there exactly, obviously.
There are various flavours that accompany the WOG Soundtrack. Sometimes it's cheery upbeat music like 'Brave Adventurers' or 'Tumbler', sometimes it has a far darker, even sinister, feel to it like 'Screamer' or 'Cog on the Machine', the latter reminding me a lot of Pink Floyd. Sometimes it's slow, like 'Are you coming home, love MOM' or 'Threadcutter', and sometimes it's fast and extremely annoying, such as 'My Vurtual World of Goo Corperation'.
You also have tracks like 'Best of Times', which slowly morphs from slow song into the kind of music you hear at the end of a fantasy action movie, when the bad guy gets killed at the last minute by the broken and battered protaganist.

In addition to World of Goo

I love it when people say they don't want to play World of Warcraft because 'They might get addicted'. I I thinks to meself, 'Dear god, you have never played a casual game, have you?'
World of Goo is far, far harder to tear away from than WOW. Lets look at a little something I've concocted for you.

ADDICTIVENESS
1: Want to burn game disk at stake (Anti-addictiveness)
2: Really don't want to play game (Anti-addictiveness)
3: Don't want to play game (Anti-addictiveness)
4: Meh
5: Want to play game
6: Really want to play game (Over-addictiveness)
7: Want to play game for hours and hours on end (Over-addictiveness, this doesn't count raids)
8: Only leave chair for restroom and food (Dangerously over-addictiveness)
9: Chair now acts as toilet, have food delivered directly to chair (Dangerously over-addictiveness)
10: Die at chair (Fatal-addictiveness)

World of Warcraft flits randomly from 4 through to 6. I understand a few people would have it higher, but generally it's around there for most players. World of Goo, however, changes from a 7 to a 1 to maybe a 6 and back again randomly. I can see myself endlessly striving for the highest tower in the WOG corporation... minigame thing, and I can see myself rotting away at the chair wondering why the puzzle designers made Fisty in the first place.
I swear, that frog (later an undead frog) is the bane of the freakin' earth, clearly sent by the overlord of hell to ruin the lives of all who try to beat him at his own sick, twisted game, a never ending vinyl record of defeat after crushing defeat at the hands of that insidious zombie. His eyes, orbs of molten black, staring into my soul, corrupting what little good bits remain until I'm nothing more than a blot of darkness on the face of the earth, doomed to watch him destroy my self esteem piece by piece until nothing but soot and a cynical 15-something year old remains, a blight upon the world and nothing more, crushing me into the very blobs you use to build your way to another pointless victory, THAT'S RIGHT, I'm one of the little grey ones, watching you place me in a strategic place so that my many fallen brothers can be shafted through to the ever corrupt WOG Corporation to be used for thier own evil purposes.
(it helps to imagine I'm saying everything from 'i swear', getting more and more hysterical as I get into talking about Fisty. Also, playing Screamer from the WOG soundtrack helps.)

World of Goo

Now, before I start, let me clarify that World of Goo is actually a pretty good game. The puzzles are well put together and often have reasonably easy solutions, the soundtrack is brilliant, and it's got a charming feeling to it.
Having said that...

World of Goo: A review
So, I've been playing with World of Goo for a while, and I have to say first impressions where good. The puzzles where easy enough to understand, and the ever mysterious and (in my mind, anyway) morally ambiguous Sign Painter was a joy to read. His signs, that is.
But then I got to Fisty's Bog, and I discovered the true meaning of skill.
The idea behind Fisty's Bog is you have to build a bridge out of, you guessed it, Goo, to get across to the pipe to suck your remaining goo balls into. The fatal problem with this is that the floor is covered in spikes. No problem, you say to yourself, I'll just put these handy balloons to keep it from doing that, which would be fine if the ceiling wasn't covered with spikes as well. It's an uphill battle of balance, trying to make the bridge heavy enough so that the balloons can lift juuuuuust enough so that the bridge doesn't fall onto the spikes below, or the balloons don't fly into the spiky ceiling. I was nearly ready to give up when I finally got the bastard to work. Strangely the levels after it, even until the factory stage, are all pretty easy.
I say 'until the factory stage', because Mr. Fisty makes his debue again, only this time it seems the Scourge got him and now he's undead. The level is annoyingly tedious, and I ended up skipping it, so a little scaling back in difficulty would have been nice.

That's about the only criticism I could find for World of Goo. Obnoxiously difficult levels, and they're all few and far between. It's hard to find problems with a deceptively simple indie developed puzzle/platformer game, because there's really not a lot you can say about it. There's no dreadful voice acting, unless you count the goo balls themselves which sound like a bunch of extremely verbose mice huffing helium, there's no unnecessary RPG elements, and the soundtrack is brilliant, so you can't attack that.

Speaking of which, the soundtrack is probably my favourite part of the game. Masterfully composed, and some tracks remind me of Hanz Zimmer's works, Pink Floyd, the Toys movie soundtrack, and a few other's which I can't place.

Unfortunately, in some places, it's all let down by the occasional god awful level that makes you want to go to 2D BOY and ram the game disk up their @$#, but if you can look past that it's a charmingly creative game and I would heartily recommend it to anyone who isn't afraid of change from all the mainstream FPS games we see clogging the market.