The Nature of Luck

I'm very lucky.

It manifests in a few ways; the obvious but often overlooked things like being a western white male with a job and home, having consistent access to current knowledge and technology, having somehow convinced a gorgeous clever sweet woman to marry me...

One of the ways in which I am currently experiencing my luck is in the quality and quantity of presents my family and in-laws provide me. I never really ask for much anymore as there have been too many times where I've got what I asked for and then never used it, but at Emily's insistence I maintain an Amazon wish list to point her family in the right direction. Here's the haul:

• Lip-shaped soap on a rope
• "Brain bender" wire puzzle
• "Play!" Chocolate gamepad
• Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies
• Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs
• The Chanur Saga, C. J. Cherryh
• Nova, Samuel R. Delany
• "We R Igors" Discworld Diary
• "Dragon Wars" Volume 1 Parts 1-4
• Tetris lights
• Tekken Tag Tournament 2
• Blood Omen 2: Legacy of Kain
• Assassin's Creed: Rogue
• Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl
• Pokémon Alpha Sapphire
• Bravely Default
• Suikoden Tierkreis
• The Planet Construction Kit, Mark Rosenfelder

I'll also list my wife's presents, because I'm sure I'll get around to the games and books eventually:

• Pokémon Omega Ruby
• Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
• Rooms: The Main Building
• More Brain Training from Dr Kawashima
• Martin the Warrior, Brian Jacques
• Outcast of Redwall, Brian Jacques
• Mariel of Redwall, Brian Jacques
• The Witches of Karres, James Schmitz
• On the Town
• The Night of the Hunter
• Rock & Roll Music IQ, C. Dismas Burgess
• Dragons at Crumbling Castle, Terry Pratchett
• Mind-Boggling Lateral Thinking Riddles
• Another chocolate gamepad
• Maneki Neko

Now is also the traditional time for retrospective. This year hasn't been great; we've both suffered from illness and Emily has mourned for a long time. Thankfully, we've come out of it alive and ready to keep going, so here's to an excellent 2015.

Next year, I resolve to make better use of my time. On too many occasions have I complained of having nothing to do, or too much to do, or of being bored or directionless. It's making it difficult to achieve any of my goals, and I want to become more efficient. To this end I'm putting together a schedule and attempting to stick to it.

Too Busy

It seems like it's been forever since I last posted. I have this terrible habit of spending hours thinking about what I'm going to write and then not actually doing it. To that end, I'm just going to update with all the games I've acquired since last time, then think about it some more.

• Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise - free on Games With Gold. I know nothing about this series
• Little Big Adventure - free on GOG. I never got into this series when I was younger, but I do know that it's considered something of a classic. Also, there's a speedrun which beats it in about an hour.
• Metro 2033 - free on Steam. It's an FPS, has some kind of very depressing setting.
• Red Faction Guerilla - free on Games With Gold. I have this on Steam already, so I'll probably play that version instead, but still. Free games!
• The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings - free on GOG. Haven't played the first one yet, but I've seen some footage and it does seem my sort of thing.

Hey, I didn't spend any money on games! I did spend some time on them, though. Here's the results.

Once I got back from America, I decided to start tackling the behemoth Heroes of Might and Magic series. Naturally I started with the first game, and so far I've beaten two missions. Mission 1 is a simple one designed to ease you into the mechanics, as HoMM was pretty revolutionary at the time. Technically the series started with King's Bounty, but that has since spiralled off into its own franchise; I'm not sure how similar they are now. The graphics are pretty good but the spell sounds are starting to grate on me a little. However, Mission 2 beat me up the first time I attempted it; I did a poor job of defending my earlier acquisitions and gradually lost so much ground that it was pointless to carry on. The second time had me recruiting a lot of heroes (I hit the maximum, in fact) in order to stand watch over the many villages I crushed along the way. Also I discovered how broken Dragons are. It seems fun, and I'm told that HoMM3 is considered a high point so I'm looking forward to it.

Iron Man (PS2) has been sitting on my games shelf for a little over two years, so I decided to take it off and actually play it. Being a film tie-in, I didn't expect anything great, but it sufficed. For the first few levels I thought it was impossible to die; I was playing on easy, but I couldn't even find anything in the interface suggesting a health bar. A few further missions in, the game decided to disabuse me of that notion by cramming the entire level full of dudes with missile launchers, and it actually became kind of fun. There was some hiccoughs along the way, but I beat the entire game in one sitting. Considering I got it for the low price of 'free', I guess I got my money's worth. Might speedrun it one day. A nice addition is that Robert Downey Jr. actually provided voice acting for the game.

I had been itching to try out The Lord of The Rings: The Third Age ever since I spotted it in the shop, so I pulled it out and excitedly spent 20 minutes trying to get Emily's NTSC PS2 to run it. Finally I got started, and it crashed after another 20 minutes of gameplay. Thankfully it's been fine after that. The game is essentially a side-story to the film series where you lead your own not-a-fellowship consisting of a Gondorian, Rivendell elf, Dunedain and Dwarf (and more later I guess). Currently my goal is to find Boromir, so I imagine that won't end well. Third Age plays like Final Fantasy X; the battle system is almost identical, which is not a bad thing. Graphics are fine, I like how party members go RARRRR when they get buffs/heals cast on them, the strategy is fun but a little easy so far, it's all good. Also, there's this secondary mode where you can play as the bad guys in a series of fights - a good addition, because the combat is obviously the strongest part. Killing The Watcher in the Water was an amusing aside. I wonder if we also end up killing the Witch King and Sauron himself. Maybe even Saruman. That would be fun.

Emily's family are visiting England again, so a fair amount of my time from now on will be spent with them, but I did manage to spend a couple of hours playing Kuri Kuri Mix / The Adventures of Cookie and Cream with my faithful coop partner. We ploughed through Music World and Trick World but Magical World is ending up being a real headache; there's a section on level 1 which seems to demand an incredibly precise jump, and if you've seen that game, precision does not enter into it. Hopefully we'll manage to get past and finish that level so we can never see it again.

Englishman no longer in New York, part 2

And... for some reason Emily's dad decided to buy a PlayStation 3. So, that's going to be staying in America so it doesn't paralyse me with yet another choice of games to play. Here's what we have for it so far.

• Assassin's Creed and Assassin's Creed II - yes I know I already have them, but Emily's sister wants to see me play through the series
• The Last Of Us - pack-in game, heard it's good
• Batman: Arkham Origins - also pack-in, I've actually heard this is the worst one of the series so far, but it's a good introduction because it's a prequel and I'm not tired of the combat yet
• Ico / Shadow of the Colossus HD - yessss
• Heavy Rain - Emily wants to see it

OH MY GOD

Englishman no longer in New York

That's right, Emily and I are back from visiting her parents. I acquired a zillion games there. I'll post about them right now, and then write another post on events there. When I remember.

First of all, birthday presents!

• Project X Zone (3DS) - had my eye on it for a while
• Fire Emblem: Awakening (3DS) - wanted to get into the series for a long time
• Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon (3DS) - this is actually Emily's present, but I'm sure I'll play it eventually

Then, did some shopping of my own.

• Earth Defense Force 2025 (360) - bought to play with Emptyeye, I thoroughly enjoyed 2017
• Suikoden (PS1) - finally! been trying to get more of the series for ages
• Suikoden III (PS2) - yay
• Mass Effect 2 (360) - finished the first game sometime last year, want to continue the plot
• The Lord of the Rings: Tactics (PSP) - heard fairly good things about this
• The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age (PS2) - I like RPGs
• Legion: The Legend of Excalibur (PS2) - like I said

Oh also free games.

• Darksiders II (360) - currently playing through the first game
• Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (360) - yep

Split into second post for tags.

Mobile Mobile Gaming

Currently in America! I have eaten a bagel every morning and that makes me at least 5% happier than usual.

Before I left, I played through Deadlight, which isn't very long, but still quite fun. Gameplay is a simple mix of gunplay and platformer 'puzzle' solving, with a reasonably fleshed-out backstory. I collected a bunch of optional things, but not everything, so one day I'm sure I'll go back and look for them. Think of it as a smaller, less silly version of Shadow Complex. Also you get achievements for doing pretty much anything.

Google emailed me to say that the free store credit I got for buying my Nexus 7 was about to run out, so I bought a few games on Play to use it up:

• Tales of Illyria: Fallen Knight - don't know much about this, but it has very good reviews
• Warhammer 40,000: Carnage - more about this in a sec
• QuestLord - a dungeon crawler, beaten this already
• Dragon Quest - yes the mobile port of the original, trying to get mad RPG cred yo
• Assassin's Creed: Pirates - actually free, but got it at the same time

QuestLord was pretty cool; not terribly complicated, but a fun romp, and definitely worth $2. Plot is simple but fairly well written, and there's a surprising amount of lore hanging around waiting to be looked at. The challenge ramps up at the end and necessitates different strategy, and the three different races have different starting areas, so I think once I beat all three I'll mark it as Complete. It does also have 'Quick Games', which are premade characters placed in random dungeons, but they seem unnecessarily difficult, I'll try again later. Might be worth speedrunning if I can capture Android video.

Warhammer 40,000: Carnage is a run and gun. It's competently made, but quite repetitive. I'm onto the second map right now and I'm definitely starting to get tired of the gameplay. I'm ignoring the pay-to-win aspect with it as I do with any other game of this nature, which makes some of the levels fairly challenging to obtain high ranks on, so there is that, but my tablet seems to be a little too old to play it optimally - the chugging often results in my getting hit or falling off a ledge. Also, touchscreen controls just don't work terribly well with action games; it's just too easy for your thumbs to slip slightly out of the button press ranges. I think I'll try to beat every level and then put it down.

Aside from this, GOG has a Ubisoft sale on right now, so I couldn't help but buy more games. This list is going to get a bit repetitive.

• Heroes of Might and Magic: A Strategic Quest
• Heroes of Might and Magic II: Gold
• Heroes of Might and Magic IV: Complete
• Heroes of Might and Magic V: Bundle
• Heroes Chronicles: All Chapters

Yeah, that's a lot of HoMM to play through. If you're wondering why III isn't there, I bought it a few days ago.

Development

More than a month? I must have been busy.

A lot of my time recently has been taken up by developing a game; it doesn't have a name yet, and it's not ready for public consumption in any metric, but it's coming along and I'm enjoying stretching myself. I've never written a 3D game engine before, so there's a lot of learning to do. I'm also unsure how efficiently I'm doing things, so I hope the engine will continue to chug along nicely even as the game world gets more complex.

Of course, this wouldn't be a Lag.Blag post without a bunch of new games.

• Neutopia (VC) because Emily wanted another Zelda game
• Dungeon Explorer (VC) as I wanted another dungeon crawler
• Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV: Wall of Fire (VC) because I don't own enough strategy games already
• Tropico 4 and associated DLC (PC) as I liked Tropico 3 despite not playing it much yet
• Tales of Maj'Eyal (PC) it's a roguelike
• Dishonored (360) it was free
• Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine (360) it was free
• Warlock - Master of the Arcane (PC) it was free
• Anvil of Dawn (PC) GOG sale
• Heroes of Might and Magic III and associated expansions (PC) GOG sale
• Receiver (PC) it was free
• Halo: Reach (360) it was free

I've played a little Wall of Fire. So far I managed to throw my units uselessly at Gongsun Zan and get destroyed. Might need to read a little about the strategy of this game before I play it again.

Also, I've finally beaten Nier! I had been suspecting 'the twist' for some time so it didn't come as a huge shock, though I was already fairly numb after the constant soul-crushing nature of the plot until this point. You're obviously meant to keep playing after beating it, though. To that end, I've started the next game but I haven't got too far yet.

I picked up Eternal Quest almost two years ago on a whim and finally got around to playing it a few weeks ago. It's a simple roguelike, with (unnecessarily) flashy graphics, but some rather bizarre additional mechanics. The most confusing is the Jewels command, which fully depletes your mana bar (which rises by killing stuff) to deploy a bunch of damage-over-time traps on the tiles around you, depending on how much mana you had. It also removes any 'Possession' effects you might have until now - they (otherwise) permanently increase your level by one at the cost of doing you damage occasionally. Yeah, I don't know either. It didn't take too long to beat, maybe 6 hours. Might speedrun it one day.

Diablo III has sat unplayed for some time. I pre-ordered it and wasn't particularly enthused when I finally got it; it wasn't the massive disappointment that Final Fantasy XIII was, but something seemed missing. I revisited it recently and found it pleasant enough to beat, though again nothing special. For a title with such a long development cycle and gigantic amount of work behind it, I still find it very underwhelming. The biggest single fault I could point to is the lack of customisation, though I do like that the swapping-skills system encourages you to play around with combinations. It's just mindless fun (for a few hours) but nothing you'd want to pour your life into like Diablo II.

You saw Halo: Reach on the list up there, and I've already beaten it. I don't really count myself as much of a Halo gamer or fan but I have beaten the first three titles on Legendary (in coop) on other people's consoles. In fact, I beat Halo 2 before I even had a Live Gamertag, so unfortunately Halo Waypoint isn't picking it up. I decided that trying solo Legendary would be a waste of time, so I compromised with Heroic. To be honest, I didn't find it very much fun; the plot is risible and the dialogue is chock full with military nonsense that made me want to skip the cutscenes, though I didn't. The gameplay itself is Halo, again, which is fine, but I felt like the variety in firefights wasn't as interesting as the previous games. Several times I felt like I'd already beaten the mission I was on, and near the end of the game it made me re-take a position I'd already conquered from a different direction, which was just dull. The ending with the cannon also confused me for a long time, as dying seemed inevitable. Took the stupid measure of simply waiting by the cannon until asked to fire, then getting in and firing. Overall, disappointing.

In non-gaming news, Emily and I will be travelling back to America in a few days! It's been a long time, because of Emily's right-to-stay application, but finally I'll be back to eating bagels every morning and actually playing on my 2DS. It will also be a pleasure to see Marc and Jess again, and possibly even stream some gaming/speedrunning with them! Ah, I said it was non-gaming news.

The Hour Of My Return Is Already Overlate

It's been a while since I posted here, because I'm dumb. No navel-gazing this time, just going to be talking about games.

Recent acquisitions:

• Ordered Samurai Warriors 2: Empires from CeX literally months ago, they finally got around to sending it. More Musou!
• Some free with Xbox Live Gold games: Gotham City Impostors, Battleblock Theater, AirMech Arena, Motocross Madness, Warface. I know very little about most of these, but I have seen Battleblock Theater before and it looks like a laugh.
• Somehow I managed to win a copy of Soul Blazer from the last Crystals For Life, so... now I have that, too.
• Nintendo saw fit to give me a free game of my choice (from a short list) so I plumped for Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins. Stay tuned for more on that, later in this post.
• They also gave everybody Steel Diver: Sub Wars so I guess that's new too.

I started playing Darksiders - it is pretty fun as I had guessed. However, it is depressing seeing how every mechanic in the game is lifted from another game; is there not one original idea in the entire thing? I hope so, because it is getting predictable. I just got Ruin, the horse, so at least it won't take forever to get around any more.

Played a few campaigns of Warriors Orochi 2 now, the storyline is bizarre and pointless as always. I don't know many of the Samurai Warriors characters yet, so there are new faces every campaign, which is nice. Got quite a few generals I enjoy playing as so far - Zuo Ci is still overpowered as all get out. Still got Wu and the Orochi campaigns left to do.

Much progress is being made on the Spiderweb Software front; I beat Geneforge 2! That is, I beat it by leaving the place to fend for itself, then I continued to play it and actually beat it properly. I went with the Awakened path (again) despite initially starting out Loyalist, because Emily hated it when I chose the options that were mean to the serviles! I think this instalment is an improvement on the prequel; all of the factions (except the Barzites) are nuanced and have enough supporting rhetoric that joining them seems like a logical choice. It really does just depend on what kind of character you want to play. I've since started playing Geneforge 3, but I haven't got too far yet. I'll talk about that in another post.

I've had this PS2 fighting game sat on my shelf for a long time without playing, so I thought I'd pull it off and beat it. The game is Spectral Vs Generation and it is a very Guilty Gear-inspired piece, but with lower quality graphics; some research indicates that it is essentially a port of a PSP game, so I understand that. It's fun, nothing special, the characters are all typical anime fare, end boss is overpowered, the usual. I played as Kryce, a 'dude with sword' character with a bunch of mix-up dash things. His combos were relatively easy so I breezed through until the last guy, who is unironically named "Holy God Earth". Very annoying fight; many rounds came very close as I managed to knock him out of some of the more unsafe animations, but it took maybe half an hour for me to actually win! Might look back at it again sometime, maybe beat it with every character for the 'Completed' state on Backloggery.

Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins was a surprise addition to my collection; it was something to do with having a Club Nintendo account for a certain amount of time? The other games on the list I'd either played or had absolutely no interest in. I'm not the biggest Mario fan, though I definitely enjoyed Super Mario Bros. 3 back in the day, so I decided to give this one a shot. It has a hub structure which allows you to finish the levels/zones in whichever order you wish, so there isn't a difficulty curve as such. I feel like some of the zones are trickier than others, but it's a very close thing. I found a couple of secret exits, but probably not all of them (not sure if this is actually tracked in-game). Rushed through all the zones without much problem, but after you do all six zones there's a last level which is way, way harder than the rest of the game. Again, this level alone (and the multiple-stage boss at the end of it) took me about 30 minutes by itself. Not a bad game, but I am glad it was free.

It sounds like a lot of activity, but it really isn't, because a lot of my free time has been spent playing that destroyer of careers, World of Warcraft. My main character is firmly in the Mists of Pandaria endgame now, working on Flexible raiding. I still enjoy it despite the repetition; it does help that I have a couple of toons just reaching Wrath of the Lich King content on the way too, so I can swap between them if I get tired of waiting 3 hours for another raid party.

No progress on any speedruns, I'm afraid. I'm still interested in running every game ever but I'm finding it very hard to actually pick one to go with. Either Blaze & Blade or Klonoa 2 sounds likely because they have the most planning done of any of the runs I want to do.