The End is Coming!

Mike | Friday, August 17, 2007
Hey all, whaaaaat’s happenin’? Nothing much here, although I am trying to get myself together somewhat in preparation for my junior year which starts in a little over a week. It’s pretty exciting to be able to see everybody again (esp my gf), and all that good stuff. I’m almost thinking whatever they have first night, I’d have to get a cheesesteak wrap because that’s my “thing.” Anyways, that’s not that important, so we’ll see what goes down come the 26th.

I took a trip to Staples to get the staple school supplies – notebooks and pencils (I made sure to get 0.7mm this time since I tend to break 0.5mm), and I picked up some Sharpie’s because you can never go wrong with them. All I need now is basically a trip to Walmart or whatever to get anything else (ie duct tape). Until then, it’s coming down and I got the whole “if there are any dinners you would like to request before you go back, let us know” thing. I did request taco’s, and I’ll probably make quesadillas for them before I go back (beyond that I know I’ll have to bust out the mac+cheese, and I guess a pizza wouldn’t be out of the question).

My dad likes to try and get my textbooks online before I go back to save some money, so I think most of them have come in. Now we’re trying to get a 35mm manual SLR camera I’ll need for one of my Comm classes on Ebay, and I’m waiting for some ink for my printer to come in. Meanwhile, I have to try and help more around/outside the house (still need to mow again and pull weeds or whatever). I’m also trying to get myself back on an acceptable sleeping schedule (I don’t think going to bed like every night at sometime between 5-8am would fly for the school year). So yeh, I guess I’m at that whole transitioning stage from summer couch potato to ripe college studious tomato (sorry, had to rhyme).

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Anyways, one game I had been playing for a couple of days was Dungeon Siege for the PC. This is a kind of Action-RPG game (kinda like Diablo 2 or WoW), and it was a fun single-player experience (it has a multiplayer, but I have not tried it out). The story is your typical one, with a bad side (the Seck, led by Commander Gom), who are a bunch of baddies who have escaped from their lair that had been sealed off (or whatever) and I guess want to take over the world (etc etc etc…). You gotta kill them off and send them back to where they belong or something, and you get some help along the way.

One difference from the other two games I listed is that in this game, you won’t have basically just one guy that you take through the game, but rather a group of people. The way it works is that if you move one guy, the rest will follow and basically help that person by automatically attacking whatever needs to be slain. You can select any and control them, or you (as I did) can just select everybody and move everybody at once. You can have up to either 8 people or 7 people and a mule (who cannot be equipped like others but has a larger storage space).

Another kind of difference (especially against a game like WoW) is that you aren’t going to have 50 billion quests. Quests in this game are more like checkpoints that act as stages pointing out your progress in beating the game (therefore this type of game is one that you basically are done playing the game once you beat it, unlike WoW in which there are 60 billion other things to do even if you get through the game – I’m not sure what multiplayer is like though, so I cannot be sure what else lies in that realm of gameplay). Enemies stay dead, even if you quit the game and reload your save later.

There is basically four ways in which you can deal damage – Melee, Ranged, Combat Magic, and Nature Magic. Melee is you basic hit the enemy head-on with some type of weapon, Ranged involves the use of a bow, Combat Magic focuses more on the damaging types of magic (like fire, and spells that will help others in combat situations), and Nature Magic focuses more on magic that involves the manipulation of environment and whatnot (ice, lightning, healing, etc). Both types of magicks (pretty spelling) have spells that do kind of overlap, with different names and effects (ie summoning, healing, etc.). Each character can specialize in any of the four, and you are free to swap it up at any point in the game (one character can start out Melee, but by the end of the game be a Nature Magician).

I guess I better wrap this up…I’m pretty sure everyone is asleep by this point. I do like this game because there is a pretty linear path to get you through the game, but you are still free to do a little exploring for a dungeon or two that is a bit off the path. There are a good number of items (and spells) available for use, and I do recommend getting a packmule to help you carry all of those items you will run across. You can change the camera angle around, so that’s pretty nice too. Replayability lies in the fact that your guys can switch their profession at any point (in one runthrough of the game, my main dude was Melee; this last time I played I made him a Ranger). Overall, it may not have all the “everything” that WoW has, but it’s still a great play (there is also a Dungeon Siege 2 out there, which I have played and am impressed by).

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Surprise! This one will (hopefully) be shorter, but I just wanted to make a quick thing with a game I just started playing tonight, Terranigma, for the SNES. This one is another RPG, with a more Adventure-RPG style (much like a Zelda game, for instance). Basically, here the main character jumps into a magical box and upsets the balance of the 2 worlds or something, and he must go fix the world(s).

The game plays much like Zelda, where you need to go around to different areas and get through them (whether that involves getting through some kind of puzzle, killing bad guys/bosses, etc). One different here is that it is more basic RPG-oriented (hit points, most of the strength/dex/vit/luck bonuses or whatever they are). Most of the weapons (so far) seem to be spear-oriented, and you can do a couple of maneuvers (swinging, jabbing, jump spin, etc). So yeh, most everything is your basic Adventure-RPG style.

One other difference is the menu screen…er…not really sure what I can call it. As I said before, the kid found this magical box and somehow binded with it. Now, whenever you want to pull an item up/switch armor or weapon/change game options, hit the Select button and your character will jump into a box. This transports you to the box world, and you take control of a little flying thing by the name of Yomi (it looks like a purple bouncy ball with wings and flapping ears). Here, you can travel to 4 different rooms (Center Room [where you can do basic things, like game options, or just some guides to help you with the game], Item Room, Weapon Room, and Armor Room). Do your thing, and just hit Select when you are done and, BOING, you jump right out of the box and you can continue with your game.

So yeh, like I said, I am still in the midst of playing the game (but I have brought back the plants, birds, wind, and animals [and I think currently working on humankind]), so woot for that. It’s a pretty fun game overall (although nothing too special), but it may have the most interesting menu screen I’ve seen.

Okay, well I guess I’ll call this post finished for now. If you actually got this far, good for you. Later y’all, peace.


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