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| This chapter is clearly about teh puzzls |
Showing posts with label Ongoing adventures. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ongoing adventures. Show all posts
Alien Breed 2: Puzzles! I mean Shooting Aliens! PEW PEW
More Aliens! More Weapons! More... puzzles? Chapter 2 of Alien Breed nearly immediately launches us into solving puzzles. Admittedly simple puzzles, but its still an odd juxtaposition for a 80's arcade shooter remake.
Ok, poison trap puzzle solved, we're off to meet up with Mia, the creepy robot lady (possibly taken over by an evil AI. We've been hinted at).
Alien Breed 2: Assault
Why is it that in every "Discover a ghost ship swarming with zerg-like
aliens" game, there is identically colored alien goop covering half the
ship?
Wait.
Why is that even a question? Is the sci-fi branch of survival horror so saturated with zerg-infested derelicts that a new ultra-specific genre has been born?
For that matter, if you've given me an assault rifle and as much ammo as I can use, why is this survival horror again? There is neither fear nor even really tension, even on "veteran." Just a lot of beasties popping out of monster closets and getting mown down by my character, a former Space Marine with "super-human" determination and tenacity. Also the longest active-duty service record in more than three centuries.
This. Is. Not. Survival. Horror.
I'm not enjoying this game. However, it hasn't managed to kill me yet, so onward we slog.
Age of Empires 3: Slog Slog Slog. Also Pirates
I was kind of concerned about starting Age of Empire 3. I picked it up on sale forever ago, but never actually installed it. It's got some refreshing new mechanics, though, plus the introduction of hero units. Hero units, incidentally, aren't all that useful. As the screenshots (yay screenshots!) will attest, heroes spend an awful lot of time dead.
Also, its a slog-fest. Hour-long introductory scenarios are not a good thing.
Scenario 1: Hold of Jannissaries and cannon until reinforcements arrive.
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| They have guns. I have crossbows. Shit |
In any case, my valiantly dead Scottish knight Morgan Black holds off the Ottomans until his Swiss buddies show up. Victory!
Insert REALLY BAD cutscene here. Yes, Ensemble, you've moved to 3D models. We get it! This is not the generation for in-engine cutscenes, I promise. Please stop.
Age of Empires 2: Part 1
I actually finished a tutorial!
The Scottish resistance against Longshanks' invasion was a resounding success, thanks to Heavy Cavalry and Trebuchets. Wait, what? um... nevermind. No, there isn't going to be any more detail than that, because wrath of ye gods the intro campaign is boring.
I must admit I was kind of dreading AoE 2 after the fiasco that was my playthrough of the first game. However, its been so long since I've played this that I'd forgotten how big the gap is between the two games. For example, units that will actually attack enemies on their own! And production queues! And Gates! Win!
Etc etc, so on and so forth. Now on to France, where I get to watch a "young peasant girl" save France from the Evil English.
....I finished a tutorial!
The Scottish resistance against Longshanks' invasion was a resounding success, thanks to Heavy Cavalry and Trebuchets. Wait, what? um... nevermind. No, there isn't going to be any more detail than that, because wrath of ye gods the intro campaign is boring.
I must admit I was kind of dreading AoE 2 after the fiasco that was my playthrough of the first game. However, its been so long since I've played this that I'd forgotten how big the gap is between the two games. For example, units that will actually attack enemies on their own! And production queues! And Gates! Win!
Etc etc, so on and so forth. Now on to France, where I get to watch a "young peasant girl" save France from the Evil English.
....I finished a tutorial!
Age of Empires: A Text Adventure, Part 1
Because of the (apparently) infamous DirectDraw conflict in Windows 7 and 7-era legacy support, I had to dig out an old XP laptop to play Age of Empires. Unfortunately, the output of screenshots on that machine is a black screen with a couple of graphical artifacts, so our journey though AoE is going to be a text adventure. (If anyone knows how to get AoE running on a 7 machine, let me know and I will move my files and produce screenshots).
The introduction campaign follows the rise of Egypt. The first two missions are eye-stabbingly dull. Get food to recruit villagers. Now do it again! (Avoid the alligators in the meantime).
It's on the third mission that things start to get interesting. I have to find the discoveries (which appear to be neolithic equine carvings) before the bad guys do.
The Libyans have mounted scouts. I have villagers armed with hunting spears. So when a single scout attacks my village, I very nearly die. A single injured villager survives the massacre to carry on. After I stabilize and rebuild, I send out an intrepid explorer to find the discoveries.
He gets eaten by an angry lion. :(
His buddy (Intrepid Explorer II), manages to discover the last discovery.
Mission four starts us in the same area, so I'm going to assume that Intrepid Explorer II is still around. He goes lion hunting and avenges his friend. In the meantime, I need to stockiple enough food to progress to the tool age. On this map, that means elephant hunting. Two villagers, including Intrepid Explorer II, get gored, but the hunting party brings down the villager. We are victorious! Eventually.
In mission 5, I have a small army and no village. The pharaoh has asked me to eliminate a Libyan raiding party. Bob the axeman and Ramses the archer both died, but all the Libyans were killed. Stay off my land! I won't see them again.
Mission Six was very nearly a loss. The pharaoh directed me to stockpile 800 food and take control of a ruin. He didn't tell me not to piss off the neighbors. My axemen wandered through their village and led them right home before getting slaughtered. I got up to 800 food and managed to sneak a villager over to the ruin just as the main attack started.
Long but simple pretty well defines mission seven. Kill everyone! Except the Canaanites. Get 1000 Gold! By trading with the Canaanites? Got that? Good, go watch your people run around for half an hour.
In mission 8 "Crusade," I'm supposed to take one of these new priests (I love the conversion mechanic, by the way) and convert a ballista (what?). Almost immediately my village is attacked by the ballista and a swarm of archers. Fortunately, I had managed to build a pair of improved composite archers, who are apparently invincible.
The ballista made a beeline for my priest, but was converted before it managed to make the kill. Effortless win!.
That's all for now, folks. I'm pretty sure I'm nearly done with the Egyptian campaign, so it'll be on to the real stuff from there. I'm open to any ideas regarding getting AoE to work on 7, or getting screenshots to work in XP.
The introduction campaign follows the rise of Egypt. The first two missions are eye-stabbingly dull. Get food to recruit villagers. Now do it again! (Avoid the alligators in the meantime).
It's on the third mission that things start to get interesting. I have to find the discoveries (which appear to be neolithic equine carvings) before the bad guys do.
The Libyans have mounted scouts. I have villagers armed with hunting spears. So when a single scout attacks my village, I very nearly die. A single injured villager survives the massacre to carry on. After I stabilize and rebuild, I send out an intrepid explorer to find the discoveries.
He gets eaten by an angry lion. :(
His buddy (Intrepid Explorer II), manages to discover the last discovery.
Mission four starts us in the same area, so I'm going to assume that Intrepid Explorer II is still around. He goes lion hunting and avenges his friend. In the meantime, I need to stockiple enough food to progress to the tool age. On this map, that means elephant hunting. Two villagers, including Intrepid Explorer II, get gored, but the hunting party brings down the villager. We are victorious! Eventually.
In mission 5, I have a small army and no village. The pharaoh has asked me to eliminate a Libyan raiding party. Bob the axeman and Ramses the archer both died, but all the Libyans were killed. Stay off my land! I won't see them again.
Mission Six was very nearly a loss. The pharaoh directed me to stockpile 800 food and take control of a ruin. He didn't tell me not to piss off the neighbors. My axemen wandered through their village and led them right home before getting slaughtered. I got up to 800 food and managed to sneak a villager over to the ruin just as the main attack started.
Long but simple pretty well defines mission seven. Kill everyone! Except the Canaanites. Get 1000 Gold! By trading with the Canaanites? Got that? Good, go watch your people run around for half an hour.
In mission 8 "Crusade," I'm supposed to take one of these new priests (I love the conversion mechanic, by the way) and convert a ballista (what?). Almost immediately my village is attacked by the ballista and a swarm of archers. Fortunately, I had managed to build a pair of improved composite archers, who are apparently invincible.
The ballista made a beeline for my priest, but was converted before it managed to make the kill. Effortless win!.
That's all for now, folks. I'm pretty sure I'm nearly done with the Egyptian campaign, so it'll be on to the real stuff from there. I'm open to any ideas regarding getting AoE to work on 7, or getting screenshots to work in XP.
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