Right now on the games front...

Right now I've got sucked into Terraria. There's something about these graphics and mundane tasks that are so relaxing for the mind.

People usually choose their music dependent on moods. I do the same with games. If I want to just relax a bit, Ill fire up Terraria, or another Adventure-game. I play adventure-games when Im in the same mood as I would be to pick up a book and read. Relaxed, focused. At ease. I'd listen to Opeth's Windowpane-album and drink Lady Gray Tea with a spoonfull of honey.

Terraria is (as you probably know) created in a charming 2D that brings your mind back a good decade... But it still feels fresh.

Which is where the next thing on my current list comes in:

The Longest Journey (1999, Funcom)

I recently downloaded it on my Eee-Slate to play, and its working swell (despite some problems making it work with my stylus at first). This little gem is guaranteed the best thing to have ever come out of Norway's largest game-factory Funcom. Oh Ragnar, why can't you recreate this feeling? It was so genuine, the characters were marvelous, the story was great.

I won't say that games like those don't get made anymore, because honestly if you're one of those people who make such claims, you're suffering from one of two possible reasons:

1) You're overly sentimental to old games or

2) You're not playing a large enough scope of games.

But still, I too am sentimental over old games. And this gem is worth another play-through. Steam, 10 Euros.

By the way, did you know that The Longest Journey predicted Twitter?

What Autumn looks like.

Monday Night Combat

I've been meaning to play Monday Night Combat since I read about it in PC Gamer a while ago, and so I picked it up now during Steam's Summer Boot Camp sales. So far, fun stuff! I love how its combining lanes ala DoTA and the FPS fun of TF2. At first it kind of reminded me of the Arena games in Borderlands Mad Moxxy DLC, which I was rather worried about. But the lanes saves the game, gives it more of an edge. Or at least so I hope. The problem with Mad Moxxy was how long winded and boring it got after only a short while.

What are you supposed to do? Defend your home base against the opposing team. Red vs Blue. Classic. Upgrade turrets, upgrade skills, upgrade your robots and help them break through the lane of opposing robots and of course, fuck up the counterpart.

Looking forward to playing this properly in a LAN environment. Should be fun!

Cute games vs Sad state of Mind [Visuals]

Me choosing what game I want to play is, I admit, often very shallow. I want the graphics to give a certain feeling. Granted, I have played and enjoyed games as UO and AO, but generally I tend to not want to play anything that doesn't look nice, so Ill admit that visuals is very important to me.

After about 8 years as a gamer (advancing from Nintendo-kiddie, that is and not taking into consideration Backpacker and Flight Simulator...) and thinking back, I think I can safely say that the amount of cuteness I choose to go for in a game is relate able to how shit I feel in real life.
Usually when I'm down its because of my physical state. I try not to get affected but really, the longer the period of time where I'm in bad shape; the more bitter and down I get. I don't think I have to elaborate on that; its quite natural, no?

Simplified, my choices seem to follow this pattern:

Sad Panda: Cute games such as Rose, FlyFF, Bush Whacker.
Happy: Adventurous games, often RPG's, such as Fallout, BioShock, Borderlands.
Confident: Competitive games, Shooters and RTSs such as CoD , HoN, Demigod.

Heck, even CSI: Crime City can be labeled as Cute. Just look at this dead body:

CSI: Crime City

The cute games are often very periodical since when I snap out of it, I tend to get a sugary overdose just by looking at them. I'm never attracted to start playing these games when I'm up and generally happy. I'd even say I'm more bothered by them at that point.

I assume its not "just me" who's got it like this, because assuming a person is alone in doing anything is fucking stupid, but I wonder how many of those who choose the Cute Games (and who've passed age 15) over the more serious and challenging ones is doing it for the same reason - a quick Happy-fix far away from the reality of the harsh actual world.

BushWhacker

Fallout: Nuka Break - Fan Film

Awesome!!



(Got this through Spill.no)

CSI games, casual playing and...more casual gaming.

I admit that in spite of their flaws I tend to like playing the CSI games.
And by flaws I mean its evidently not created for players over the age of 13. I mean the whole game is really just hovering your mouse over the screen to make sure you get this icon that tells you there's evidence there.


I don't quite recall, but the first time I started playing the CSI games I think I was around 18 yrs old. That's ... 6 years ago now. I seem to recall them being harder. I seem to recall an option to turn off that damn feature where you'll see the mouse icon change when hovering over interact-able objects, and I sure as heck seem to recall you being able to try out all the different equipment on the evidence to have Grissom tell you you're an idiot to try to use plaster on a fingerprint and that doing so would lower your score.

Im not sure weather I remember it this way because I'm just a plain better gamer now then I was before (no doubt there) and can recognize the game design and miss a more "hardcore" mode on the CSI games, or if they really did shave the CSI games down so much that they've taken away the actual exploration in favor of making the game more "casual friendly". It seems more like interaction story-time for young CSI fans then a game.

I bought a CSI game a couple of days ago. Generally, I've liked playing them then I have a moment for myself. When I'm home alone, or, when the man is asleep. Then I can sit here in peace and shift through mud and used syringes, looking for evidence, nailing that bastard.
Last time I played a CSI game I still had that feeling it was perhaps too casual. But anyway...
I bought the newest CSI: Fatal Deception when I had such a moment alone, and fired it up. I felt slight disappoint that the game is basically a simplified 3D Find Waldo.

Maybe I've just outgrown it?

Either way, I fired it up and I got stuck at the first case! I was happy about this, I was hoping there was something I had missed, something I had overlooked. Something making me actually search and engage myself in the story. Some twist at the end. The blood of the suspect didn't match the hair I found, instead it matched the victim's! Were they really family, siblings maybe? Why hadn't he told us about this in the interview?

But no. After a lot of messing about, it just seemed like a bug. So I checked up on a walk-through, and the hair was supposed to match the suspects DNA. Bah. Now it's stuck at Case 1 and since the other cases doesn't unlock unless you finish case 1, I guess I need to wait for some fix.

However, when I shut down the game I got a little pop-up. I had been granted a 1 year free Elite membership on CSI: Crime City, a facebook game. Generally I'm not particularly fond of facebook games, not because I have anything against them -they just seem to be a waste of time. I've played a couple though, such as Texas Hold 'Em, Bejeweled and my favorite Word Challenge. Either way I was starved of entertainment so I figured why not. I got a elite pass and everything.

Turns out all Elite pass really does is give me a funky floor:

If you get a seizure from looking at this screenie, I cannot be held responsible.

And the possibility of buying stuff for Ubi-points (read: real money) in the shop. So, for buying the game for real money I get the privilege of buying exclusive stuff for more real money! YAY!

Either way I played it a little, and its moderately entertaining in a grid-search kind of way. What is funny about this story though is that the f2p facebook game have so far given me more entertainment value then the CSI game I originally bought.

Anyway... I just bought "Blue Toad Murder Files: The Mysteries of Little Riddle" on steam (was on sale) today so perhaps I can use my casual detecting skills there instead. I hope!

Rift me back!

Im currently playing the Rift beta and it seems I fell down into a rabbit hole...

I was out swimming, doing a mission, when suddenly I got fatigue loss. Since I hadn't seen any form of fatigue measurement before this sort of took me by surprise, I went up to the surface to breathe thinking that had anything to do with it by no. Fatigue went down even when breathing fine and just bobbing in the water without swimming, so I soon found myself dead.

And far, far away. Being a newcomer, I resurrected on spot. I figured I had been teleported to the nearest Defiant resurrection near the newcomer town (for level 6-10 newbs) since thats where I died but no such luck.

Let me show you on a map:



What the HELL?

On the way down to where I died I quickly realized that something was really wrong. I tried to stick to the road but level 14 creatures kept killing me. And there's a level 19 rift right by the ressurect. Yay.

Now you see on number 4 on the map now.. I tried to swim over the pass there as a ghost. Those dotted lines? Serverborders of course. Invisible wall. You should see the way I need to walk to attempt to actually get back to the newb city. There's no way for a level 9 Defiant to get around that path.

Pushing "Stuck" only sends me back to the ressurection on number 2.
So, now Im waiting for GM help to move me back to the newbie playground.

Edit: And Im out! Many thanks to GM Primarch who got me out of there and revived me. It took about 1 hr 20 mins from making the inquiry to getting help, which I assume is a alright time considering they have let the whole darn world betatest this weekend.

HoMM... No.. MM Heroes VI stuff.

So, Ubisoft and Black Hole Entertainment have released more Heroes VI stuff with their new website update. The website now looks pretty darn sweet, and the trailer is beautiful and the screenshots show a lush and pretty game environment.. and in spite of the fact that the game developers sounds like raving lunatics in the videos, -its promising. But there is a few things that worries me.

Both the Concept Art and the Creature pages looks a bit like Black Hole might have been a bit too faithful to their color schemes for the different races. Inferno's is of course Red and Black like always, but does all of the creatures have to look like they are made out of molten lava?
Take Tormentor and Juggernaut for example:


Luckily the trailer shows that the Juggernaut is going to be of rather substantial size, so hopefully there's not going to be a problem with selecting the wrong creature because they're too similar. And that can happen after several hours of playing, when your eyes is a little tired -trust me on that.

There is some other few graphical bits that annoys me a little, like the Crossbow's man undignifying bird-hat (sob, it was my favorite unit in V!) and that the hair of the Blazing Glory looks like wobbly 2D strings, and the griffin looks bland and boring. But I'm generally fond of Haven so that is probably my fandom-eyes looking, and I don't like being that person.

And then there's this:

Ignoring the outragous stats for now, I'm hoping that the reason why there is only three slots for spells is to save room, and that more slots will open once you've filled all three, not because that's the full amount of spells that can affect a stack.

Either way, I'm most definitely going to buy the game and Ill most likely enjoy it. If it'll become a new favorite over the other HoMM games though... that remains to be seen!

Dude, I totally have a friend who plays WoW.

It occurred to me today as it has several times lately, that my siblings really think I loathe WoW-players.

The first time I remember this coming up for discussion was when my sister had her at-the-time boyfriend over for a visit. We were talking games, and he had barely gotten to "World of Wa.." when my little sister told him to shut up unless he wanted her sister to claw his eyes out.

This have come up to discussion several times, and I was painfully reminded of this crude and unforgiving vision my siblings have of me today... When my little brother talked about macro'ing, and said he used it while playing WoW, but before I had even opened my Steam Chat-Window he had quickly followed up with "NOOOOOO I dont play often!!!" I don't know where this terrible misconception have come from. Man, I know a lot of WoW Players. Some of them are even my friends!

One of them is even a GM! Dude, its okay to play WoW. It just so happen that I don't, but that doesn't mean its bad or anything. We're different. We're BORN different. That's life, you just gotta roll with it. There's no reason to be ashamed. You're okay by me, kid. I like you just the way you are!

I mean how can you not respect this?

Recommended: Magicka

I admit when I first checked out Magicka over steam I thought... boring. Quickly went on to other games. I just looked at the film and saw something that looked like a mundane and unpersonalized setting with some seemingly narrow skillset and gameplay. I was unimpressed.

I was wrong. Im ashamed of being so wrong.

Luckily for me a friend of mine had checked it out and convinced me to try it out. I had missed out on all the charm and all the gameplay elements by looking at the video (without sound) and not bothering to read the text to peak my interest.

The game is lighthearted and entertaining. Swedish developer Arrowhead just seem to have had so much fun when making this game that the feeling really pops out on you, and the feeling of relief you get from playing this cute little game after a stressed out day can probably be chalked up next to Vicodin, without the grumpy sideeffects of Dr. House.
The gamedesign is simple yet advanced.. You have all your elements on QWERASDF, and to make some really nice magicks you combine the elements before you blast it off at your enemy, to fry, douse, bomb them or whatever your choice of pain is. Me, I like lightning. Why? Because my Co-Op friends don't. Mwahaha.

Anyway, most of these magicks you need to figure out yourself, and some (well, most) can harm yourself as well. Which means there's a lot of trial and error on what magicks are good to use. (Tip: ASF, and combine your laser with your co-op friends for bigger game.) This leads to some pretty great moments in co-op where you and your friends come to some ...painful realizations. Like how using lightning while it rains might not be a great idea. Or, you know... Meteor Showers.

......fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

I felt like an alchemist trying to make piss into gold and actually ending up doing it. Either that or ending up with piss all over myself, depending on how well you know the elements effect on each other, or the buttons that controls the elements. You'll often end up pressing the wrong key and that might just happen to be the death of you. But you're like a scientist. Its all for the sake of grand discovery! Aint it great! Alright, maybe it wasn't the best analogy.

Either way, this game is a little gem. Especially if you can speak Swedish.

We're all used to pretend babble from games. After all there's probably no gamer in the world that haven't heard (willingly or unwillingly) The Sims talk to each other. In Entropia we used to have these pretend babbling as well, which a lot of people from over the Atlantic used to ask if were supposed to be Swedish.

I didn't realize it at first, since Im a lousy norwegian, but a fun thing about the pretend-babble in Magicka is that it is Swedish. Well, parts of it anyway. Part Swedish, part English and part Hobo. I think the combination is supposed to sound like Old Norse? Either way it can really crack you up when you hear their tiny little voices talk about bananas or ...visetitters? and ost.
And then you kill them dead.

Oh yeah, be careful about that. It seems you can kill your questgivers. Whops.

The only major sad thing about Magicka is that online co-op's doesn't seem to save on neither host nor anyone else. So you'll have to restart your adventure if you don't finish it the same night. But still. I recommend it for some fun and lighthearted co-op goodtimes. Well worth 10€! Enjoy!

Steam Holiday Sale Lootbag

I bet you guys have rolled your eyes plenty times when girls wiggle of glee over the sound of the word "Sale".
Like my little sister said when she visited me last summer here in Gothenburg; "Rea (sale) is the most beautiful Swedish word that is."

Now imagine that their glee over 50% off trousers, shirts, dresses, six-pences, pantaloons and what-not is somewhere close to what you felt, oh avid gamer, when you saw Steam's holiday sale. And I gotta admit, as much as I do love shoes and shiny things and colors you can actually wear and not just look at, it exited me more then any clothing sale could ever do.

Granted we didn't buy that much, I would have liked to buy a lot more.. The steam sale is just a too good opportunity to pass up on getting some of the games you'd thought about playing but never got around to. The Indie Packs were hilariously cheap though and almost made me feel bad about not spending more on all those great games.

Here's what I ended up with:

• Indie Brain Pack:

1. Zen Bound 2
2. Diamond Dan
3. Puzzle Bots
4. Windosill
5. Big Brain Wolf

• Indie Adventure Pack:

1. Mr Robot
2. Jolly Rover
3. Gish
4. Samorost 2
5. And Yet it Moves

• Indie Heavy Hitters:

1. Audiosurf
2. Braid
3. Osmos
4. Shattered Horizon
5. The Maw
6. Zero Clash
7. Trine (Had this already)
8. World of Goo (Had this already)

• The Ball
• Greed Corp
• Grotesque Tactics: Evil Heroes
  
  
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R pack:
  
  1. Shadow of Chernobyl
  2. Call of Pripyat

Hallo!

I've been meaning to start blogging again, just like I've been meaning to start twittering again. Since last year, a lot have happened in my life. I've moved to Gothenburg permanently, for one thing. I got a job here as a Community Manager for Planet Calypso, so that's been eating up a lot of my willpower for social medias. I run the forum PlanetCalypsoForum.com... But yes, enough about work. While this blog used to be a lot about Entropia (as well as my other games) Im going to try keep work off it, and attempt to keep this blog more personally me.

So what have I been up to lately other then work?
Uh.

Good question.

On the game front its pretty easy. I've been playing Fallout: New Vegas, Civilization 5, I just finished Portal (because I'm honestly ages behind everyone else it seems), I played Dead Rising 2 recently.. And a whole lot of HoMM5. That's what I've played recently.. Since last, that's a whole other story. Not going to go into that, it'll certainly ruin my fingers.

Oh, October.

Oh October,
you are way too short.
And too close to November, that is close to December. 

I fear I'm going to spend all my monies on games. Oh deary me. I guess my family and friends will get macaroni-art wrapped in toilet-paper for Christmas. 

There's so much to do.
First of all, I've preordered Fallout 3 Game of The Year set, with all the add-ons. I've decided to play through it again now that I have a more proper PC. I hadn't played any of the add-ons anyway, so might as well just start all over again. Its so worth it. Due October 16th.

And Machinarium is also coming October 16th. It looks like a cute little platform, and certainly seem to suit the whole post-apocalyptic month theme I'm having. So that's down on my list.

And then I've preordered Borderlands as well. Now that's something Im really looking forward to. Due October 30th. 

And then there's the deposits in Entropia... 

And whatever else comes along. When was that Baldurs Gate sequel supposed to drop?

How to Liberate Mars

... Well, in all honesty Mars shouldn't be liberated should it? I mean finally us girls have the upper hand it seems, in controlling sexuality and using that feminine Venus-power to control them, buwhahaha...

No seriously. I liberated Mars the other day by playing Red Faction: Guerilla. Its a fun game, Ill admit, but a bit repetitive. I gotta say its a blast to blow things up (fun pun, drumroll inserted.) even if destroying a whole EDF to itsy bitsy pieces means a bit of lag for my 8 gb ram/GTX 275 machine. 

The missions were pretty much the same though. Save hostages, Raid EDF, Defend the bases, Transport vehicles (which I found out was a whole lot easier when taking "en spansk en", shortcuts.) and blow things up in creative ways. The only storyline was the main one, and I gotta say I missed having some personality in the rest of the missions, instead of being so generic. 

When I finished the last mission I kind of hoped it would open up some fun and quirky missions, but no such luck. The only "personality" I really liked in RF:G was Jenkins. Cool dude. 
Either way what I realized when I ended the game was that I really missed the humor and weirdness of Fallout 3. Missing another game when ending one, isn't really the ideal. But RF:G was worth the money, still.  

Anyway, I think Ill play the F3 expansionpacks now, as I haven't done that yet.

RSI&RTS

Well Ive been taking some time off my spidercamping in Entropia since my RSI got really bad after a while. I knew it would happen as I pushed myself way too hard, hunting 10-12 hours a day nonstop. That just doesnt work with me. 

I recieved a beta invite to Heroes of Newerth, which is pretty much DoTA in new gfx. Its alot easier on my fingers so Ive been spending some time there. Which have lead to a revelation: 

....I really suck at RTS. 

Maybe its all the things going on or maybe its because I just cant seem to see what is going on at the map when it happens. I get confused, like someone just put a stun spell on me irl. 

"Øøøøh, now what. Oh Im dead"

I gotta say Im a whole lot better in Bleach Wars (W3) then DoTA but Ive not played much DoTA either so maybe it'll come with time. Right now I spend too much time figuring out items, spells and what combos work, and what to watch out for in the other chars.  Anyway, I enjoy it, its still amusing.

For me that is. For the DoTA geeks that comes into the noob servers and scream at us who is still learning, it seems unamusing. But honestly, get a life -dont come to the noob servers if you cant handle people making mistakes. And get a haircut.

Vu10!

And the pictures doesnt even justify it. Im very happy I bought a new computer for this. Its running smoothly on Very High settings. The textures, the movements, the shadows, the day/night cycles. Its even better then I anticipated. I love it. 

Now just to wait for the rest of the 'game' to be implemented again and bugs to be fixed. But this is... breathtaking :)

Download at PlanetCalypso.com!

WoW -The Movie?

So its recently been announced that Spiderman-director Sam Raimi is going to direct the upcoming World of Warcraft movie. Im really curious as to what the story will be. Will it follow lore, or will it be more of a suprise. What impact would, in that case, the movie and the lore it follows/creates impact on the roleplayers in WoW?

Now, Im no WoW Player. Ive never played WoW. Warcraft, sure. WoW -No. Never. Of course I know a little about it (can't get away from it if you like it or not) but my knowledge pretty much ends there.

Well, we'll see. Interesting stuff.

Heroes of Mighty Nightmares

Pun intended (I was playing Infernal after all.)
We were playing Heroes of Might and Magic (5, Tribes of the east) for about 16 hours straight last night. And this morning.

Like most games, even bejeweled and plants vs zombies (damn you, pop cap.), if I do it enough it will show in my dreams at some point. I am one of those people who tend to remember most of my dreams when I wake up, often several -and my dreams are often very, very vivid.

So when I recieved a text to my phone, I woke up and litterally ran out of bed. I was still in a dream-like state, thinking that if I didnt move my ass out of there, I'd get pwned. I worried how many steps ahead I was.

And then I realized how foolish it seemed. And I laughed a little, while still a little, just a little, angsty.

I think Im gonna choose a different race tonight. Damn horsies.

Getting closer...

Things are really closing in now. The big move is just hours away. Okay it might still be a couple of days, but its less then three digits in hours, so lets just call it a "few".  
At least Ill call it a few, like the brat I am who've always been used to having alot more of everything. Okay Im not really serious. I just make lame jokes when Im nervous. Hehehaho... 

Either way. Kitchen's done, livingroom is pretty much clear and my little sister managed to get herself infected with the kissing disease. Which really is a horrible sight, and I hate to leave her right now. She's in quite bad shape, but she'll pull through. 

Tomorrow (or later today, after sleep) Ill have to clean this place up and start packing down everything in suitcases and so on. Im not going to take my computer with me (just my screen) since its outdated anyway. Ill just terrorize Stoik to build me a new one. I can't wait for long nights of gaming on a fresh comp that doesnt growl at me when I open Opera. Im gonna start off the new era with the new Monkey Island games. 

Oh and I also learned about the game called Borderlands today. Seriously, the look of that made me wet myself. Its like if Battlefield Heroes made sweet lovin' to Fallout 3 and they had Quadruples playing Co-op together. Or something! 

Road Cones Protect my head!

Plants vs Zombies!
With that name, this cannot be a serious game. Yea I thought so too.

I was dead wrong, pardon the pun. This adoreable game is a fantastic tower defense game, uber-cute awesomesauce! It has lots of nice minigames in addition to the original challenge. While its not a big release graphically, its certainly one of the games that'll just keep you smiling for hours. For a very low cost.

Basically the game revolves around you defending your house against zombieattacks by using plants with different abilities.

I first found out about the game when its teaser song was released, and it was just wicked. The game followed suit, its crazy in a good way!
Click here to see the song!
I know your type; Tall dark and dead... You want to bite all the petals off my head..

Steam allows you to download a demo for free, where you can play 1 hour. The price isnt much to whine about, so I suggest buying it! Trust me, it gets alot harder further into the game. If you like puzzles or towerdefense, this is worth checking out!

Like a friend of mine said "This game is so YOU!"
Kudos to PopCap, I love it!