Archive for the ‘Strategy’ Category

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Lapsed

Monday, December 28th, 2009

Yeek, I’ve been falling way behind with the updates…

Not much has happened in EQ2 since the holidays have interfered with most everyone’s plans. We finished up some Butcherblock quests and picked up the starter quests in Zek, and then worked on the first stages of the Glowing Black Stone quest. My illusionist alt is currently level 30 and working through the BB quests as well.

I played through Pixeljunk Shooter over a couple of days. It’s short, but pretty good, reminiscent of the old scrolling shooters like Zeppelin and Fort Apocalypse. Your main goal is to rescue scientists and collect diamonds, but to get to them you have to manipulate various fluids and gasses by shooting passages that let them flow around, interact with each other, and so on. I’ll be looking forward to a sequel.

I played a bit of Europa Universalis Rome: Vae Victus. Since I’m still new to the EU series I started out with the Pictii, a minor province in the Scotland area. Unfortunately it’s a rather slow way to learn, as it takes quite a while to get the funds, population, and civilization rating to actually start expanding, and I kept getting overrun by barbarians. I started another game as Carthage, which is much more advanced, but haven’t done much with it yet.

I picked up DiRT 2 for myself over the holidays, and played through all of the rookie-level events. It is, of course, much like the original DiRT, except that the rally raid mode seems different (point-to-point, whereas wasn’t the original’s on circuits?), and there are no hill climb events. The difficulty seems inconsistent, too — I can do certain events like rallies on casual and beat the pants off the AI, but raids and rallycross on casual are only just barely beatable.

And last but not least, a friend got me Borderlands for xmas and that’s what I’ve primarily been playing the last few days. It’s basically Diablo crossed with an FPS, and the variety of weaponry you can find is tickling the loot whore in me. So far we’re level 16 and have done most of the first couple starting areas.

Posted in Action, EverQuest, MMOGs, PC, RPG, Racing, Shooters, Strategy, Xbox | No Comments »

Aw, Nobody Missed Me *sniff*

Monday, September 14th, 2009

I hardly got any gaming done last week thanks to a business trip. About the only thing I did do was play a brief introductory session to Crusader Kings. It’s another one of Paradox’s history-based games, but with an emphasis on specific leaders and their personal traits, their relationships with others, establishing a bloodline, random events that happen to you personally, managing the people in the royal court, etc.

My games haven’t gone too well so far, though. In one, I was immediately given a demand to either let another person take over my province (which is an instant game-over since you no longer have a leader controlling anything) or go to war, and the war is almost impossible to win with your starting military. In another, I was doing pretty well for about 10 years (the total length the game covers is around 400 years), but made a choice that wound up getting me excommunicated by the pope and everything spiralled downwards from there. In another nearly everyone close to me wound up getting sick or dying, and my wife went insane. And in yet another, nothing interesting is really happening, as the duchy I chose was just too small and irrelevant. I have yet to get a really good, stable game going, and it doesn’t help that it crashes every once in a while.

I did also get back to WoW tonight, finishing off a handful of more quests in Icecrown, and I think the main remaining non-daily quests are ones I need a group for. I also started doing the initial quests for the tournament area in the north-east corner of Icecrown, including things like jousting. I might be able to earn some better equipment there.

Posted in MMOGs, PC, RPG, Strategy, World of Warcraft | No Comments »

Mmmm, Chile…

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

I was only in WoW tonight long enough to do my dailies and make the titansteel shield I mentioned before. Instead, I spent most of my time playing Victoria: Revolutions.

I picked up a bunch of the Paradox strategy games in a sale a while back, but this is the first time I’ve really taken a good stab at one. Following the guide to Chile here, my first attempt didn’t go so well as I flubbed up the timing of purchasing some essentials and it was taking forever to get industrialized. I took another stab at it tonight and had a much easier time of it, especially thanks to getting the Gold Rush event almost right away.

Although the scope of the game is pretty broad, I’m still new at it and just wanted to focus on keeping the economy afloat and growing for now. I soon had enough gold to promote some capitalists, and they soon started building factories and railroads sooner than anyone else in South America. From that point on it was mainly a matter of making sure factories had the right population types to work in them, trading for the right resources to keep them supplied, balancing the budget, picking research options, and sucking up to the neighbours so they wouldn’t attack me.

(There’s a lot of time spent waiting for stuff to finish and watching some interesting developments going on in the rest of the world. Texas got clobbered by Mexico very early on; the US managed to delay the civil war until 1869; the German Empire formed without Bavaria or Lippe, leaving a little dot right in the middle of Germany; Russia got gangbanged when it decided to take on Germany just before the Crimean War was about to break out, and when the dust cleared the UK wound up owning half of Denmark somehow. And around the same time that the US civil war kicked off, Mexico was suddenly invaded by the UK, France, and…Canada? It was so cute watching their just-barely-formed single little division running around amid all the big UK stacks. “We’re helping!”)

Posted in PC, Strategy | No Comments »

Trophies From School

Saturday, August 15th, 2009

I also revisited Disgaea 3 today, since a recent patch added trophy support to it.

Unfortunately none of the trophies were awarded retroactively, but it turns out that I wouldn’t have gotten very many anyway. A lot of them are for fairly rare or tricky things, and I spent a while working on them. I mainly worked through all 100 floors of an item world while in the Land of Carnage, which got me a trophy for doing so, a bunch of the pirate trophies, and a couple for mystery floors seen along the way.

I have around 1/3rd of the trophies so far. I’m not sure how much time I’ll spend on them, since some of them require just plain luck in tough spots.

Posted in PS3, RPG, Strategy | No Comments »

Also Known As New Jersey

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

In King’s Bounty tonight, I finished off most of the remaining above-ground elven quests and encounters. It turns out that some of the ‘overwhelming’ named fights aren’t really as hard as the estimation claims…

So, now the only place really left to fight in is the Land of Death. This time, I managed to find a boat there, which made getting around and scooping up loose loot much easier. I finally found the last obelisk, which netted me a map that I can give to one of various different people for a reward (sounds like the best reward for me is a bunch of runes if I give it to the not-yet-rescued elven queen).

With a few bumps to my leadership (now around 10,500 at level 22), and a bit more exploration of the Land of Death, I now have some places where I can find appropriate-level fights, so the outlook doesn’t look so bleak anymore. I’ve also managed to build up some decent cash reserves again, so I’m not in immediate danger of running out of troops anymore.

Posted in PC, RPG, Strategy | No Comments »

Mo’ Elves, Mo’ Problems

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

And it was yet another long day in King’s Bounty, but with a fair bit of progress. I finished up nearly all of the encounters and quests in the dwarven areas (except for a gigantic spider that’s really tough), finished off all of the ‘named’ pirates sailing around the Isles of Freedom, and then headed to the elven lands.

The elven areas are fairly tough, but there I was able to pick up new types of troops that are a bit better than the humans I’d been sticking with. The archers in particular are pretty good, as well as some unicorns and dryads. I’m sticking with the horsemen though. Unfortunately, heavy losses mean I’m running out of the lower-level elven troops now, and I’m on the verge of running out of cash, whereas I left the dwarven areas with more money than I knew what to do with.

I’m going to have to choose my battles a bit more carefully, though right now most of the upper elven lands are largely cleaned out and now I need to work on the Land of Death, where things are even tougher yet. Maybe I’m going to have to revert back to my cheaper human troops…

Posted in PC, RPG, Strategy | No Comments »

Cleanup On Isle 3

Sunday, August 2nd, 2009

It was a long day in King’s Bounty today, but there wasn’t really any progress in the main quest. I finished off a bunch of encounters and quests on the Isles of Freedom, including a few I didn’t even know about before, and started clearing out what was left of the dwarven areas.

Along the way I also completed the test of magic, which was one of those areas that was immediately accessible right at the start of the game, but seemed like it would be near-impossible…

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I Bet She’ll Be In Another Castle, Too

Sunday, August 2nd, 2009

Yesterday I finally got back to King’s Bounty after a bit of a lapse, and made some quick progress in it. I got the peace treaty with the dwarves signed, and in doing so unlocked the final member of the Chest of Rage and got promoted by the king. But, now the princess has been kidnapped.

That opened up the Elven lands, and I did a quick bit of scouting around there to pick up loose rewards, though there wasn’t nearly as much I could easily grab as there was in earlier areas. I’ve still got plenty of old quests to work through, so after that I headed back to the Freedom Islands and cleared out a bunch of monsters and quests from there.

Posted in PC, RPG, Strategy | No Comments »

Who Would Have Expected To Find Dwarves There?

Monday, July 27th, 2009

A fair bit has happened in King’s Bounty lately, starting with the Freedom Islands, where I cleared out most of the first island and did a few quests.

I still have a bunch of stuff to do on the islands, but after a bit of wandering, I discovered a cave near the back of one of the starting areas and it turned out to be a connection to the dwarven areas. I decided to work on that for a while since that’s where the unlocks are for the remaining Chest of Rage monsters, and after taking care of a traitor in the caves, I unlocked Lina soon after arriving in the dwarven lands. There I also found a quest for discovering all of the obelisks I’ve been seeing, and I only have three more to go now.

I cleared out large chunks of the various underground areas (Dwarves? Underground? Gasp!), completed a few quests along the way, and found the area where I can unlock the final Chest of Rage member. I need to do some more work to clear out that area though, and I also found connections to the demon and Mehgard areas, but they’re way too tough for me right now.

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Turtle Soup For Everyone!

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

It was about time to actually advance in King’s Bounty, so I went and fought the turtle to advance the main quest. For that I got a promotion, a whack of leadership points, and there’s now an infinite supply of some other types of troops at the castle.

Next, I was sent off to the Freedom Islands. The enemies there are much tougher, of course, so I didn’t actually do much fighting there. I just wandered around, finding some new quests and picking up loose rewards on the map. I inadvertently solved the quest that I’d been sent there for (to find some James guy) and headed back to the starting island, with over double the leadership points I had when I started the session.

Back on the main island, I proceeded to clean up as much as I could, and completed a bunch of lingering quests and cleared out enemies that had been too tough before, though there’s still a small handful that are still way too strong. Along the way I finally found a wife, albeit a bit of a froggy one, and had a kid as well.

Next up, back to the Freedom Islands…

Posted in PC, RPG, Strategy | No Comments »

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