Following on from yesterday’s double game blog on A.I.M., I bring you A.I.M. Racing. A racing game, set in the A.I.M. universe.

SUPPLIEESS!!!

As you’ll recall -- I hope -- I wasn’t looking forward to this game, due to my dislike of the previous A.I.M. games, but as it turns out, A.I.M. Racing is kind of good. Or well, it’s not bad, at all. I cannot really find any faults with this game whatsoever -- except its use of SecuRom.

With the previous games, there is no real setup for why you’re racing these mech things through courses designed within the A.I.M. universe, but honestly, that doesn't matter. You compete in a championship, progressing through rounds, and at the end of each round you unlock a few new ships, and a skill upgrade.

The controls though, oh the controls; no more using the mouse, just the keyboard, and it’s wonderful. It makes the game a whole lot easier, as it has some sort of auto-lock on the enemy ships, so you can just get in range and spam Z to fire your main guns.

You have different attributes for each ship: speed, acceleration, weapons etc, and these are what is different about each ship. I, as I generally do, chose the one with the best speed and acceleration and sped off at the start of every race and the rest of the ships were unable to catch me, and if they did, taking them out seemed pretty easy. Hitting shift gives you a temporary speed boost, which refills every 20 seconds or so, and when coupled with the speed boost pick-up allows you to quickly gain some time on your opponents, guaranteeing an easy victory.

The pick-ups were your general pick-up style pick-ups: rockets, mines, ammo, health, shield, and speed boost. The rockets locked on, and the mines lay there where you dropped them, as mines do; I ended up getting quite a few kills with the mines somehow, I guess the AI thought ‘OOOOH SHINY THING’ and went explode a lot.

It reminded me of a Star Wars podracing game I used to play at my uncle’s house when I was younger, (Google recognises podracing as a real word btw) and I think I would have played the hell out of this when I was younger. This being good has been a nice surprise, but it has left this blog somewhat boring. Oh well.

So this blog will be a bit different; in this pack we have A.I.M. and A.I.M. 2 so I have decided to play them both and write about how they compare.

A.I.M.

Firstly, I think A.I.M. is a first person mech game, but not with actually mechanised assault unit people looking mechs, but instead, weird ship looking mechs. But even so, the game refers to you as a ‘mechmind’, or something similar, implying you are some sort of mech thing.

So when I ran the game the first time, it instantly took Windows out of Aero mode, for no real reason, and when I attempted to change the options to my native resolution it alt-tabbed me out of the game and ran a new .exe to let me change the options. Whoever designed that is a pretty awful human being.Whoever designed the menu cursor on the other hand, is a brilliant person. It is kind of luminescent, and everything you hover over is illuminated and it looks awesome, especially as parts of the menu are metallic.

The game itself, well, you are dumped into the game, facing a door, a door to what? You’ll never know. Enter the door and the game drops you in a really weird conversation style text thing. It asks your name, and then you click some red to text to make it all go away. Then it sends you outside, with no real objective, and if you per-chance, try out your guns before you leave a certain zone -- which you won’t find out ‘til you enter the area -- a turret will shoot your in your mech-face, repeatedly. Instead of throwing me to the beginning of the area or anything, it threw me out to the menu.

So I reloaded, got through the dumb text stuff again and went off into the world to see what’s what. I learned that what seems to equal nothing. There were some hills, and some other mechs, and then nothing. NOTHING. I flew about some more and found another little base thing, it was a shop of sorts. I entered, exited, and then seemingly clicked too many times, as by the time it loaded in, I was getting buggered up by the turrets again. I died. I rage quit.

A.I.M. 2

Well, first thing’s first, that cool luminescent cursor? No longer luminescent. Why they decided to drop that I’ll never know, it was great. Secondly you can actually change the options in-game now; no more secondary .exe to alt-tab you. So maybe it was the same designer who did both of those things, and the bad outweighed the good?

This game starts you out with the same name entering greeting conversation stuff as the first game, but it’s preceded by a super compressed CG pre-rendered intro featuring a ‘mechmind’ searching out some debris, and finally finding a small ball, and brings it into the hold using a tractor beam. I still don’t know if you’re a person controlling the ‘mechmind’ or whether these ‘mechminds’ are sentient.

So this game gives you the choice of whether you want to be a warrior, a trader, or a courier, which was nice. I chose a trader, because I wasn’t sure the combat was going to be much fun. The game then tells you it needs to make sure you’re up for it and chucks you into a tutorial, which was very nice. Except it reminded me how awful the controls in this game are; super floaty, and if you move the mouse outside of a little box in the middle of the screen you start rotating at super speed. So I turned the mouse sensitivity all the way down, and proceeded with the tutorial. It taught you how to get around, use your the thrusters to jump up some things, and then finally allowed you to shoot some things.

This game then throws you out in the big blue yonder with a couple objectives, but those objectives are pretty vague. I was told to find and convince some ‘mechminds’ -- convince them what I am still not sure -- so we could take over a base, but I was not told how, or where these guys are, so I kinda got lost. I would have persevered, but the controls are just too bad and it just isn’t fun to play.

Now... Tomorrow? A.I.M. Racing. Kill me now.

A Farewell to Dragons is the game of the day, and well, the game doesn’t really live up to it’s name. The game is essentially a typical party based, pausable action RPG, a-la Neverwinter Nights 2, but it’s nowhere near as deep.

It was also the biggest bitch to get running; whilst yesterday I had to set the resolution to something less than half the size of my monitor, this game had a bloody fit 'cause I am running two monitors. The game got itself into a horrible sequence of trying to swap my main monitor to the default resolution (1024*720 lol) and tripping out, and getting stuck on half a second of the 1C intro screen. This completely rendered my PC useless; I was unable to alt-tab out, or even alt-f4 the game. I finally managed to gain control of my second monitor for enough to time to terminate the process, which was aptly called thegame.exe.

Wild boar

You start out with a shoddily voiced, super compressed, intro sequence, introducing you to Victor, the PC, and Telle, a lady he mysteriously met and allowed to share his house; she cooks you some scrambled eggs in return. Victor then accompanies Telle to her home, for no explained reason, which takes them through the ‘city’s’ park area, as if that’s a big deal. The game then shows you a tutorial, which whilst nice, is kinda sparse, and only really shows you things you would know if you have played a single action RPG in the last 10 years. But a tutorial was nice, especially after the last two games. You then have an arrow to follow, to the village Telle lives in -- I think -- which takes you along a path with some boar and some bandits; the staple RPG first real enemy.

After spending the night in a inn and talking to the innkeeper who alluded to some sort of time travel possibly having happened, you are attacked by a lot of ‘Ravens’, a local tribe of sorts who have been terrorising the inhabitants of this village. After helping the innkeeper lady fend off these bandits I find out my friend has run off somewhere and has asked me to come find her somewhere. This is where I learn that people think the trains -- which is allegedly what makes this steampunk -- are something special, and they refer to the tracks as ‘the way’, another thing not at all explained.

So I run through this forest, to wherever it is my friend is waiting, and get absolutely swamped by enemies 4-5 levels higher than me, which when level 2, is a goddamn lot. They completely decimate me, with almost all of my hits missing, ‘cause you know, dice rolls. I die, having not saved due to it being the beginning of the damn game, I have to redo the whole of the game so far; so yeah, I turned it off.

The game itself has very good intentions, but honestly, it had nothing special about it. It seemed pretty generic and cliché, and even though the name alludes to DRAGONS, there were none; if you have goddamn ‘Dragons’ in your name, give me goddamn dragons all of the time.

The next game in the pack is Adrenalin, an arcade street racer come model management sim. A strange mix I know, but it kind of makes sense. I think. If that doesn't make any sense, read the official statement:

Sun Ray

Once I finally figured out how to get this game to actually run (hint: force it into 1024*768 mode) I was greated with some of the worst menu music I have ever encountered; it was bad early 2000s nu-metal, definitely not what you should be opening your game with. Speaking of the music, the soundtrack to the rest of the game was just as bad, if not worse; most of it seemingly obscure too, with this being the only song I could find on the internet.

Once I had overcome the atrocity that was the menu music I found myself in some sort of weird Amsterdam style choose your lady-friend wheel of fortune where you got to choose your model/race-car driver. Each girl had a nice bio underneath that told me all about them, like Vika the former Miss Russia, Bullet the Ukrainian potty mouth forelady, Blitzkrieg the Russian business lady/biker chick, or any of the other 9 ‘beautiful ladies’. I myself chose Sun Ray for no discernible reason other than her slight resemblance to Katy Perry, of whom I would love to manage, naw’m’sayin’? They then gave the option to buy a car, although there were only two I could afford, both with a hardtop and cabriolet version, so I just chose the hardtop hatchback ‘cause why not?

Gallery

Once I chose my character and car I was given the contracts menu where I was able to choose advertisements to put my on cars and what rewards I would get from winning etc, much like in a Football Management game, or another weird car game my brother used to play on the PS2 that’s name very much escapes me. I didn’t really study this much as it seems you can just roll through them, doing the races each one gives you to gain money. The concept of contract seems entirely superfluous to the game because of this, but I guess it gives the model stuff some context.

Then I got to the actual racing; it was fine. Whether or not fine is a good thing I do not know. It really just felt like you’d expect a weird-ass Russian driving game to feel I guess: arcadey. You rarely had to let go of the accelerator, and you hit nitrous out of every turn, and on every straight, and you would literally never run out, as you get it back for overtaking and drifting and jumping etc, much like in Burnout or the older NFS games. It’s serviceable for sure, and is probably kinda fun with your friends as you can wreck one another and knock each other off the road and other such fun things.

There’s not really much more to be said of this game. It’s ok. That’s it really. Nothing special, but a dumb model managed thing makes it somewhat interesting. More interesting than if it didn’t have it anyway. I doubt I’ll be coming back to this one, or its sequel, which ‘unfortunately’ wasn’t in this pack. Oh well, the next game has a name that has me excited for it, so ‘til tomorrow.

Alex.

Gallery

видеоигры

As some of you may have seen, the 1C complete pack is currently on offer on GamersGate for a whopping 70% off its usual price. Now that is a collection of 86 1C published games, for roughly 20p a piece. I thought this was a good deal, even if a lot of the games look awful; sometimes the more awful they are they better they are. Right? That is how it works, right?

Anyway, I decided I would play though them -- not necessarily to completion mind -- in alphabetical order and write my thoughts down, because it's the right thing to do. Now, the game.

7.62 - High Calibre

Now, the first thing you are greeted with when you load the game, is a menu screen that was clearly meant for a 4:3 monitor, but to navigate that menu screen, your cursor is a motherfucking BULLET. How badass is that? A game named after a bullet, navigated with a bullet. Pure fucking genius Apeiron, pure fucking genius.

Now it must be said, this game? Absolutely a Jagged Alliance clone. I've not played a whole lot of Jagged Alliance I will admit, but this game does feel very similar to what I have played. You control a mercenary, and I assume can recruit more, but I didn't get to that bit in my time with the game. You start out in a small former Spanish colony and are given a contract to route out and capture, or kill, a Russian mafia member, and you're left to your own ways to find him and get to him. You can go all guns blazing and just kill everything on your way to him, which is probably the super hard route, or you can go through the correct channels and try and get help from the locals and the government; which, in a very RPG-esque way leads you to other objectives to do as favours for the favours these objective givers provide for you.

That's exactly the way I went, I hunted out some government type that would be able to get me to this Mafia guy, and he asked me find out more dudes to kill. So sure, let's go kill some dudes. I get to the location these dudes 'hang' and me being a noob, and this game having like no tutorial I cannot find the option to get the jump on these dudes. So I talk to them, and the options are stop talking, and initiate combat; so I initiate combat, and straight away one of these dudes pops me in my head, which blinds me, and causes me to be unable to do anything for roughly 3 seconds, and then the next guys shoots me, causing poor delay for me, and then the next guy, and this goes on until I die.

This game is pretty good with it's auto-saves -- or so I thought -- and reloaded to the beginning of that fight. So I try again, first I am at the dude closest's head, see if I can pop him first -- headshots are instakill you see -- and just like in Jagged Alliance every action has a countdown and a cool-off, and it just so happens my action takes a bit longer than the enemy's for whatever reason, so just like before I get stuck in some dumb chain of death. So I reload again, and think, ok I will run away, using the game's sprint function, and see if I can hide behind a wall and try get the jump that way. So my character turns to run, but this somehow causes those enemies to disappear, but still be able to shoot me in to a scary painful bullet coma. And then I think, fuck this, I'll just reload to a prior save, but the game seems to only save when you enter and exit a battle, and last battle was some time prior and I didn't want to do everything again, so I gave up.

I may return to this game in the future, as I like really like the idea of it, but that's it for now, sorry 7.62 - High Calibre, but I have 85 other games calling my name, including your elder brother, that I will be playing after you, whoops.

Gallery

The rest of the screens I took, just 'cause.

Witcher 2 News

• Since release last year, the game has received over 60 awards to date, and has sold over 1.1 million sales to date.
• They showed a snippet of a new trailer that will be going live tomorrow.
• The Enhanced Edition includes 4 hours of new gameplay; with 33 minutes of cinematics, 3.5 minute CG intro, and a proper outtro that helps clear up some questions people were having.
• The Dark Edition has completely sold out already. And UK people who pre-ordered from Game will still get it, even with Game's recent mishaps.
• The Enhanced Edition patch for existing owners will be roughly 10GB and we'll be able to pre-load it soon.
• As of today the first game is available on Steam for Mac, with the Steam cross platform stuff.
• There will be an interactive iOS (>:() app comic book app thing coming 17th April. Allows you to undress women... INTERACTIVELY.
• Free back up copy at GOG for Witcher 2, for everyone who owns it already, and whoever buys it from now. Includes all special edition stuff. GOG.com/witcherbackup

GOG.com News

• As we heard a couple weeks ago, they are no longer Good old Games, but just GOG.com. This means they are going to start selling newer games, of which Legend of Grimrock is the focus.
• They have a brand spanking new downloader that they claim to be the fastest of all digital download downloaders.
• They have a new website header which shows you PMs and forum stuff, much like what you see here.
• GOODIES.
• They will start selling newer Premium Editions of games. Starting with Ubisoft games, more specifically, Assassin's Creed and HOMM:V. There games will be $19.99 each, but until the 12th of April, you can buy both for $19.99.
• We can also pre-order a new Adventure game: Botanicula: a point and click adventure/exploration game from the dudes that brought us Machinarium. $8.99 now until it's out and then $10 from then on.
• Lastly, for the next 48 hours the original Fallout will be FREE. As in, zero pennies. So you really have no reason to not go and download it.

Giant Bomb won't let me have a title long enough to explain properly, but this is just a blog comparing game sales in certain countries and the populations of said countries. Why? 'Cause I am bored.

Numery

To preface I was just reading this article whilst making myself a cup of tea and the numbers caught my eye, as they do sometimes. Now I'll say this here, this is not going to be particularly interesting, not to the regular joe anyway, but I find it interesting and thus this blog was born.

Numbers are cool, they can mean nothing, everything, and most importantly, whatever the hell you want. So for this, make whatever you want of them, as that is basically what I am doing.

Now we can all see, nothing here is particularly important, but what we can also see is that a very small percentage per country purchased this game at retail.

I find a few things here interesting; obviously, Poland was going have the highest numbers for this, considering the Witcher series was a known quantity in Poland before the games were even thoughts in CD Projekt's brilliant minds. But a few things were less obvious: firstly, the game almost sold a quarter of all it's units in Russia, a country that is supposedly rife with piracy, yet sold twice as many units per person than the USA, the supposed richest country in the world; secondly the game sold 1 unit for every 800 people in the UK, which by those odds means at least a hundred and twenty people in my little city bought the game, meaning there are 120 Witcher fans in relative close proximity to me, WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE, WHY DO I NOT KNOW THEM?

More silly things I can make these numbers mean

1. America has the most pirates per population of these four countries, maybe even... THE WORLD.
2. There is only one copy for every 72km^2 of Russia.
3. Inversely there is copy for every 1.6km^2 of Poland

And with that I have ran out of facts. Feel free to add your own. But I found this pretty interesting. Thanks for reading, and go buy the game right now, unless you're silly and don't have a PC, then buy it on 360 when it hits.

Games

This year I decided to write more of an actual blog detailing my yearly choices, based on mostly obvious categories. No Northies though, I've only played one Nolan game this year, I think. Now, to the awards.

2011's 2010 Game of the Year - VVVVVV

I bought this game just before the third Humble Bundle, I think, and played through it in it's entirety during the two weeks I spent in Florida in August, now that may be testament to how good this game is, with me playing it whilst on holiday, or to how boring Florida is, but either way I thoroughly enjoyed my time this game. The intricate control scheme, the superb level design, the 8-bit visuals, and the incredible chip-tune soundtrack all add up to why this is the best game of 2010 I played this gone year.

Runners-up: S.T.A.L.K.E.R: CoP, Just Cause 2, Battlefield: Bad Company 2

Best New Character - Zimos

Absolutely everything this guy says is hilarious. A combination of the auto-tuned voice box and the fact that he's always talking about fucking bitches definitely leads to some of the greatest lines of dialogue in any videogame.

Runners-up: Kinzie, Cave Johnson, Wheatley

Best Enemy Design - Dark Souls

Dark Souls gave us some of the most disturbing looking enemies of the year, and some of the coolest, and mostly, some of the most "Oh christ no not more" enemies of the year. The last one is probably down to the nature of the game, but the amount of times I was thinking "God no let me get to a bonfire please" was a hell of a lot. Most games you just think, oh look, more fodder, but nope, not with Dark Souls.

Runner-up: Binding of Isaac

Best PC only game - The Witcher 2

The technical feat CDProjekt achieved with this game is amazing, it utilizes the full potential of a high -end PC like no other game this year. It runs on a full range of PCs, and even brings the highest end PCs to their knees with it's UberSampling Tech.

Runners-up: Red Orchestra 2, Binding of Isaac

Best Gameplay - Dirt 3

This game had it's share of presentational issues, but the one area where no other game could touch it this year was it's gameplay. Turn off all driving aids, and pop the game in to cockpit mode and this is the most fun I had this year due to sheer gameplay alone. It captures what I would expect rallying to feel like whilst still making it fun and accessable for someone who isn't Finnish or Sebastien Loeb. Now hopefully for the sequel Codemasters will drop this Ken Block bullshit and get some Finns or Sebastien Loeb on the game and show us how they became the Rally sim Kings.

Runner-up - Being a helicopter pilot in Battlefield 3

Best Download-only Game - The Binding of Isaac

A game developed in mere months combining the simplicity of Zelda's style of Dungeon Crawling with Smash TV's quad-axial shooting mechanic and the perma-death of a rogue-like this game forges it's own genre. As simple as it is addictive the game keeps you playing after each death, if not to see to weird combinations of power-ups and how they evolve your Isaac into, well, your own Isaac.

Runner-up: Frozen Synapse, Magicka

Best Looking Game - The Witcher 2

Technically and aesthetically I believe this to be to the best looking game to come out this year. The sheer beauty of the scenery and architecture combined with the superb lighting effects and highly detailed textures and character models lead to what I would say is the best looking game of ALL TIME. Sorry Taylor, I still love you though.

Runners-up: Battlefield 3, Binding of Isaac, Dirt 3

Character I'd Most Like to Party With - Zimos

When he isn't in the middle of questionable sexual encounters and being kidnapped, he's finding new ways to pimp out his hos, of whom, we all know, are the fairest in the land. Now if these things don't sound like the components of the greatest night of your life, then I'm afraid we of a different cut. Or something.

Runners-up: Zoltan Chivay, Dandelion

Best Story - The Witcher 2

Now, this may come down to the way the story is actually told, and the fact that this game actually had characters I could care about, but this is one of the few times I have given a damn about the story in a game. It may not be as convoluted or crazy as Metal Gear Solid, but it actually had meaningful moral dilemnas that had an actual consequence unlike games like Mass Effect or Dragon Age. The actual decisions you have to make in this game also aren't as clear cut as they are in Mass Effect, they are generally as morally ambiguous as you can get, neither side being particularly right, whilst neither wrong enough for you to side against them.

Runner-up: No contender

Best Multiplayer - Battlefield 3

64 players, grand scale, vehciles, THE ATTACK HELICOPTER, tactical teamwork based gameplay. These are the things that work together to bring you the best multiplayer action of any game, not shitty corridor choke points and cheap gimmicks. This game rewards you for playing to your class' strengths: healing, resupplying, fixing vehicles etc; and these are things you can do regardless of how good you are at shooting dudes before dudes shoot you. The game has so many different ways to play and to help your team, that almost anyone should be able to well at it, as long as they play to one of these things. It also happens to be immensely fun to play with a group of guys who know what they are doing and are willing to converse, to some degree, on what they are doing, and will do. Basically: TEAM WORK IS BEST.

Runner-up: Red Orchestra 2

Most Disappointing Game - L.A. Noire

After succumbing to the hype this game seemed to generate right before its release, I thought hey man why not, an adventure game where I play as a 40s detective in gritty LA is exactly what I need. Then I played the game. My god this did not live up to any of the hype: the 40s LA they had recreated was barren, with nothing in it aside from the things the game wanted you go to next; the detective work was a matter of walking around 'til your controller vibrated and hitting X; the interrogation comprised of hoping you got the right answer as half the time the question/answer Cole gives is totally different to what you would have expected him to give and everythign is either right or wrong, which is totally not how I would have expected this to work; the gun play and driving mechanics are pretty innaccurate and their usage becomes repetetive very early on; and while the facial mo-cap is very well done, the textures of everything that aren't clues is absolutely atrocious. I certainly commend this game for the things that it attempted, but to be perfectly honest as a game, this is one of the worst I have ever played.

Runners-up: Dragonage 2, Crysis 2

Best Game This Year - Witcher 2

Objectively I feel this game is the best game to come out this year, the story, visuals, audio, characters, and gameplay, are all brilliantly executed and thusly, this is absolutely the game that deserves this title. It's a massive shame that not everyone has the chance to try this game out, but come 2012 it will be opened up for a heck of a lot of more people, and hopefully should garner all the exposure it deserves.

Runners-up: Portal 2, Skyrim, Battlefield 3

Game I Had The Most Fun With - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Now, when it comes to which game I enjoyed the most this year, regardless of whether it is deserved of any accolades, that game is easily Skyrim. The grand scope of everything in this game is amazing, the unbelievably detailed lore in this game is unprecedented - it has hundreds of fully readable books goddamnit, and varied play styles are but some of the reasons why I love this game so. I can easily get lost in this game without so much as thinking about fulfilling some of the quest objectives, and find stuff to do for hours on end, a lot of this due to the Radiant AI feature of the game, with NPCs constantly havaing things you can help them with, and the rest down to the sheer number of things you can do: mining for ore, hunting for pelts and meat, smithing armour and weapons from said ore and pelts, the only things this game is missing is the option for me to open up a shop and sell the goods I have made this way. But hey, MODS.

The order in which I enjoyed all the 2011 games I played, can be found here, if you'd like a look.

And with that, that's the end of my blog, if there are any other categories you'd like me to add, please let me know and I shall try to do so, if not, thank you for reading good sirs and madams, I hope it wasn't too much of a waste of your time.

Alex.

Quitter

As the title kind of hints at, I didn't get in to the game like I was hoping I would. It seemed a great game, and some of the core gameplay elements seemed awesome, but it's still an mmo, and you still have to do a thousand shitty fetch quests.

So I bought this game last Monday, and some how over the next three days I ended up putting in 12 and a half hours to it, and you'd be surprised just how little I achieved. Well, if you know much about the game I imagine you wouldn't be expected at all; that or I was just shit at the game. But over those 12 and half hours I took notes, and have enough to write another blog, and then write about how I wanted this game to be great.

Ships

So for a couple of those hours I completed me some tutorial quests set for one Loict Mensier. He had me running around the nearest systems collecting things and occasionally mining and shooting dudes. I thought after these few quests the game would open up and I'd be able to do cool stuff, and tbf I probably could have, but goddamn did I know how. I was quite proud as I was able to make about a million ISK by the end, which is chump change really, but go me. I also gained about 5 or 6 new ships, one or two I couldn't even use, and one like the one I was given at the beginning of the game, but this still seemed pretty cool.After finishing the tutorial quests set I decided instead of trying some of the others I would abandon my home world and explore, and so I did, a little bit. I didn't get particularly far tbh, 4 or 5 jumps away, and found a new quest set that I thought would be 'fun' to complete. A guy had me training for a space ship air show type event, he even gave me a shuttle to do so in, first he had me warping through a couple of gates and then flying between beacons, and that was it. Next I was to destroy some other ships, which was where I remembered I didn't enjoy the combat in this game at all, and my ship was destroyed before too long. This was a good excuse to buy myself a new ship, that was a lot better than the one I was currently piloting. With this ship and some better blasters I was able to eradicate the enemy thread from the arena no problem, but then I called it an end to that guy's quest set and found another one. This new one had me helping a 'princess' commit some sort of fraud to gain money off of Daddy or some such thing. A couple of courier quests and one horrible combat quest later I had finished, and thank god, that combat quest was nothing but target this ship, hit blaster and sit there for literally 3 minutes. That was boring as all hell.

After this I decided to really take things in to my own hands, so I went out mining. I sat for 45 minutes mining asteroids and then transporting the ore back to my hub, turning in to minerals and then realising I had no idea what do with such minerals. I ended up with way too much of like 2 minerals and realised I had wasted 45 minutes of time. The mining part was fine, but there was literally no sense of satisfaction or that I'd done anything of any purpose afterwards, unfortunately.

Tits

I am pretty sure that is about it. At least, it is where my notes stop, and where my memory stops too. It's a shame I couldn't get in to this game, as as I have mentioned before, this game seems really, really cool, but I know I sound like a fool saying so, this game is too much of an mmo for me to really enjoy. Maybe if this game was literally just a spreadsheet simulator I would be ok, as sad as it sounds, as that is where the cools bits are, I think. The community for this game seemed pretty friendly, but then I think my chat channel was always set to Rookie, so I guess the only people in there are going to be helpful people and newbies like myself, so it's kind of expected.

I struggle for more to write now so it's probably a sign to stop and call it a day. So that is what I shall do. Thank you for reading this. See you when I decide I have found something interesting to write about!

Alex.

With EVE Online being today's Steam daily deal I thought "My bank account sure is £3.74 higher than I want it to be, why not buy EVE Online?" So that's exactly what I did. Obviously I knew a little about the game: it's player run economy, heavy focus on ships and mining, and it's love for spreadsheets; I forgot that it's also one of the most overwhelmingly, complex games to merely 'jump into'.

Qualon Crendraven

As soon as I logged in I was taken to the character creation screen, which is always one of my favourite parts of a videogame. I was able to choose my race and what I believe to be faction? I'm not entirely sure so I left it as it was - Gallente - and then chose the most caucasian looking character; not because I'm a racist, but because I'm white. The fun bit of this came at the end, where I was able to pose my character's face and take my portrait picture. Now obviously I made my character look as much of a buffoon as I possibly could and set it as the picture everyone else will see when they interact with me.

Stargates

Now, the first thing I had to do after creating Qualon was traverse Space, which is quite complex if you don't listen to the tutorial very clearly; something I wasn't doing due to listening to Will, Norm, and Gary. The first couple of missions are simple tutorial missions comprising of going from one Space station to another using Stargates and ship Accelerating machines that I've forgotten the exact name of; all very simple and straight forward, IF you know where to go and which stargate you need to warp to. After a while it tells you you can hit auto-pilot and then you never have to worry about that again.

After all the tutorials I got to choose a career path of sorts, and I picked the most business-y sounding one - I want spreadsheets damnit. So far all I have done is mined an asteroid for far too much of the material the guy wanted, converted a ship upgrade in to material by accident, sat and destroyed a part of space I didn't really need to, and complete about 5 courier missions, all in the name of Loict Mensier. Mid way through writing this I discovered the game has a windowed fullscreen mode - something more games need - and I have written most of the last paragraph whilst my ship is jumping through numerous stargates on autopilot. I imagine there will probably be more things to do whilst the ship is autopiloting, but at this time, I am glad I have this to do else I'd be bored watching my ship go to it's destination without so much as a click from me.

ISK

Now I'm not entirely sure what will come from these missions, and what happens when I get to see some spreadsheets, but I kind of hope I'll get to manage businesses or something, I really have no idea. The space warfare seems a bit boring if I'm honest, you just lock on to a ship and hit the blasters button, and I know it'll probably get more interesting with bigger ships and better weapons and such, but I want people to do that bit for me.One thing that I found odd for a videogames: I was taxed on my reward. Taxed I say. Admittedly once you think about it it fits in pretty well in this world, but still, it seemed weird at first. I have no idea how much is a lot of money in this game, but seeing a 40 billion ISK bounty on someone's head put things into perspective, especially compared to my tiny 500,000 ISK, but then I've only been playing for 3 hours.

The Future

The future indeed. I am going to try and further myself in the world of EVE online, as, I think, it is a game I should be absolutely interested in, but tbh we'll see, Battlefield 3 is out next week. But damn if I'm not going to try.

I also realise the title to this blog sets you readers up for some sort of fan fiction... Sorry, not from me. This is merely some thoughts I have that I felt like typing out. I should probably make another one of these, maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day. I may even write down some notes and save it all up for a larger, more interesting update for the end of the week, we shall see.

Thank you for reading, see you next time?

Alex.