Tag: PC

  • Knights of the Old Republic back again

    Yesterday I picked up Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic on Steam for $2.50. I installed it and checked it out last night. Surprisingly enough, it worked flawlessly on Windows 7/64. The highest resolution it will support is 1600×1200, which looks pretty good.I had to use Creative ALchemy to re-enable EAX in the game, since Windows 7 only likes OpenAL.

    I played for a while and was reminded just how much fun I had playing the game years ago. Bioware really knows how to make good RPGs.

  • Star Trek Online Skill Cap

    My Science Officer Admiral has maxed out the level cap in Star Trek Online, which means he won’t advance in rank any more, but it also means he doesn’t earn skill points. Now if he were already maxed out in skills, that would be fine, but he’s not even close to being maxed in all the relevant skills. Sure, I could replace all the ship’s weapons with Polaron beams, for example, and respec his skills to ignore anything other than Polaron weapons. That would help, but is annoying and lame, particularly as enticing Tetryon or Phaser weapons pop up occasionally.

    Now that I’ve hit the cap, I am a little disappointed and the fun of playing that character is diminished. Perhaps I should try one of my other characters, but that’s mostly repeating ground I’ve already covered. My Admiral still has missions he hasn’t done, yet he won’t get points for them. Kinda reduces the incentive a bit.

    I will still play the Deferi/Breen story episodes, but the daily missions don’t buy me much, because of the skill cap. Maybe a good weapon will drop, but probably not. So I really will have to think about either starting a new character or playing one of my low level guys.

  • Steam problems

    I take back some of the good things I said about Steam previously. I bought the Company of Heroes pack a few days ago when it was on sale for $12.50, but didn’t install it until yesterday. I had Steam download it during the day, then I tried to run it last night. It wouldn’t run and didn’t even give an error message. When I ventured into the Steam directory to find the installation and clicked on the game EXE file, even that didn’t do anything.

    Today, the results were the same, so I had Steam verify the integrity of the cache, only to discover that 20 files were corrupt! How does this sort of thing happen? There’s no evidence that my machine has bad hardware or is likely to corrupt anything, yet there were corrupted Steam cache files. Very concerning.

    Steam is now re-fetching those 20 files and I will try to see if the game starts then. Not that I have time to play it any time soon.

    Update: I’m pleased to report that after the 20 files were re-downloaded plus 1 for CoH:Opposing Fronts, both CoH and CoH:Opposing Fronts check out fine, and CoH starts, though I won’t be checking out the game play right away.

  • Star Trek Online Weekly and Daily Missions

    I’m really enjoying Star Trek Online’s Weekly and Daily missions dealing with the Deferi and the Breen. The Breen ships are quite a challenge, and they’re nearly as tough as the Borg on the ground. So far, the plot is moving slowly, but it has a lot of potential. Most of the missions can be done in an hour each, and this weekend’s one took less time, but was quite a change of pace to play doctor (though not with an Orion green girl, I’m sorry to say). If you like Star Trek, give STO a chance – it’s pretty fun!

  • Steam vs. Impulse

    I am a user of both Steam (http://store.steampowered.com) and Impulse (http://www.impulsedriven.com), so I thought I would compare and contrast them. It is nice that we have some competition and choice among digital game distribution for the PC, as opposed to the consoles, where the manufacturer has a lock on the services.

    Steam, from tremendous game maker Valve, has got a tremendous selection of games, particularly very popular, mainstream titles. Impulse, from user interface wizards and game publisher Stardock, doesn’t have nearly as large a catalog, but does sell a number of big-name titles and, because it is the underdog, it tries a little harder. I have purchased a number of games from each and have had only good luck with both.

    Steam has particularly annoying copy protection, which in normal mode launches Steam and signs you in over the network every time you want to run a Steam game. This is not a terrible burden, but it is a delay and could be problematic if your network connection is lousy. Apparently there is some sort of offline mode, but I haven’t tried it, so I can’t comment on it. Steam also installs your games inside its folder, which is bad if you’re looking to see if the game included a PDF manual or you are adding 3rd party mods (Oblivion, anyone?).

    Impulse, on the other hand, verifies that you are legit when it installs the game, then never seems to bother you again. As far as I can tell, it doesn’t check in over the network or anything else. Impulse puts the game in the usual place (Program Files or wherever you install games). So for ease of use, Impulse is two steps ahead of Steam.

    Both system give you several tremendous advantages over buying games on physical media. First, you can install the game easily if you get a new machine or on your laptop for travel and you don’t need the DVD in the drive (which is a practice that should be banned). I hear that some games have an installation limit, but it is normally pretty generous, like 5. Now that doesn’t mean you can (or should, at least) play the same game simultaneously on more than one computer, and I presume Steam would prevent that, but I imagine Impulse wouldn’t prevent it (though the game itself might). With both of these approaches, you don’t have to worry about losing or damaging your media, but you do need to remember your password and must worry about the company’s financial solvency. In addition, you don’t get a printed manual with the games, but that’s becoming the norm anyway, and much to our loss.

    The biggest problem with both of these digital distribution systems is that they tend to charge full price for the games, while stores like Amazon and Walmart often discount games, even shortly after release. For a long time, you could be assured of paying MSRP at both Steam and Impulse, but that has become much better in the last year or two. Because of competition, both have sales every week, and sometimes, they are tremendous sales, like when I got Oblivion GOTY Deluxe for less than $8. The other great thing these companies do is put together game packs, like the whole id or THQ or Eid0s catalog, and sell it for a huge discount. Even if you only play a couple of the games, it is worth the price.

    So both Steam and Impulse have pluses and minuses. I would say that if a game were the same price on both stores, I’d buy the Impulse one because of the constant checking in with Steam, but both are worthy sources of games. If you only have a Steam account, give Impulse a try, and vice versa.

  • Evochron Legends

    Since I love the X series of open-ended space combat/trading/etc. games, I should like the Evochron series, right?

    Sadly, no. I have tried several of the incarnations of Evochron, including buying the latest incarnation, Evochron Legends, on Impulse. Evochron is a space game, like X3, where you start in a one-person space ship and try to build wealth by trading, mining, fighting, etc. I didn’t find the graphics, particularly the cockpit, to be very appealing, but they were fine. The flying around is good, and Evochron adds something important that X3 lacks: landing on planets. Not that you can do anything on the planet, but you can land in cities on planets. The same trading and mission interface is used, so there isn’t any difference between a planet and a space station other than you have atmospheric effects on the planets.

    As usual, with these games, you start off mining and trading to upgrade your ship and weapons. It doesn’t look like you can have multiple ships and automated traders, as you can in X3, but perhaps that comes later. You can configure your hull as you like, so you can concentrate on fighting or trading or something in between.

    The problems I had with Evochron are somewhat related: you are thrown into a dangerous and unforgiving universe with very little idea what to do. The plot, if you can call it that, seems pretty weak and doesn’t provide any training to help you survive. Preparing for combat is essentially impossible. I didn’t see any places where you could practice against drones or weak enemies. Instead, you prepare your ship the best you can, take a mission to a hostile sector, and get your ass kicked right away. Gee, that was fun – shall I try again? I think not. That was when I quit. I’m sure the Evochron defenders will scream that I should try again a few times and I’d get the hang of it, but, frankly, I have too many fun games to play to spend time punishing myself on one that wasn’t any fun at all. And the navigation system was just plain stupid: fast travel (I forget the buzzword used in the game. Warp?) to a planet and burn up in the atmosphere! How about having the stupid nav computer drop out of warp slightly before the big heavy round thing we are approaching? C’mon, have we stepped backwards in computer capability?

    So that’s the bottom line of Evochron Legends – an open-ended challenge in a harsh universe without all the fun.

  • More on the X series games from Egosoft – Voice Acting

    So I posted a glowing article about the X series games, which I really do love and have great fun playing. But they do have faults. The most glaring fault is the voice acting. X2:The Threat had lots of voice acting and it was terrible, but (I think) done in a tongue-in-cheek style that knew it was terrible. X3:Reunion had even worse voice acting (the worst of any game I’ve played, I think), but it didn’t detract enough that I worried about it. X3:Terran Conflict continues the lousy voice acting, but due to a bug that played station announcements over half the “mission accomplished” speeches, I didn’t have to/get to hear it. No big deal.

    Why do X series games have such dreadful voice acting? Well, Egosoft is a small, independent developer that can’t hire big name talent. And, I think, they get their buddies to do it for cheap or free. And, they are in Germany, so their buddies have German accents. But, frankly, the games are fun enough that all of that is okay. And the best news: the real baddies, the Xenon and Khaak, don’t talk at all, so you don’t have to worry about bad acting there.

  • X3:Terran Conflict

    The X series of games from Egosoft are some of the best space combat/building/trading games you can play. They are exciting, fun, have a plot that you can follow or ignore, and are very open ended. I started with X2:The Threat, then played X3:Reunion, and am still playing X3:Terran Conflict. In all these games, you start out with a wimpy ship and knowledge of one sector in space, as well as a mission to help somebody or another. Over time, you acquire more powerful ships, explore many star systems, and save the universe in various ways. How you get those better ships and what kind they are is up to you. You can fight and destroy enemies to the various races, thus getting bounties and fulfilling missions; you can trade cargo, eventually building up a trade empire with trader ships working for you; you can capture enemy ships and use them or sell them; or you can build factories and complexes of factories to make and sell goods to others. Or you can do all of the above, which is what I enjoy. One of the great things about the X series is that you can have many ships, including fighters, fast scouts, battleships, carriers, corvettes, and more, and you can fly each of them, depending on your style or your need at the moment. The enemy, too, has a variety of ships, so you will need to match their firepower.

    The fighting in the X series is usually done in a fighter or Corvette, with you aiming and pulling the trigger. The weapons vary from projectile launchers to plasma throwers to other types of energy weapons, each of which has a range and a travel speed to the target. You can use assisted aiming (once you have bought it) to help you hit fast moving and maneuvering ships. You choose which weapons to activate at any time, so you can choose lots of damage to destroy a ship or mostly shield damage to convince the other pilot to bail out (so you can take the ship as salvage!). The fighting is the most fun part of the game, in my opinion, but there are others that really like the empire building or trading aspects more.

    The X series has the most amazing forums with great people there willing to help with troubles in a mission or give suggestions for places to trade. It is by far the best user community I’ve seen. Egosoft is also pretty amazing – they continue to update their games a year or more after it is out. Their games are available on Steam and the most amazing thing is that I could enter my X3:TC serial number from the disk version into Steam and now I have the Steam version and all the achievements available! I don’t know of anyone else who has done that for their customers.

    I have uploaded two videos to show how beautiful a game X3:TC is, but I have somewhat failed. As an experiment, I set the bitrate lower on my Hauppauge HD PVR, and the videos are quite muddy and indistinct. Darn. But you can still get an idea of the beauty of the game. These are 1080p videos, so please view them at full screen if you have a good computer.

    In the first video, I jump from Argon Prime to Kingdom End and fly around a bit. I fly near a station to give you an idea of the size, and I’m in a pretty good sized corvette class ship.

    In the second video, I give a tour of some of my fleet in Argon Prime. First I fly my little scout near a couple of corvettes, then to my transport, which is huge; then over to my destroyer, also quite large; and finally to my carrier, which currently holds 43 fighters and scouts. At the end, I order the carrier to launch a fighter and fly around with it to show how attractive it is.

    Overall, I really enjoy the X games, and X3:TC is the best of the bunch. Get it and have a great flight!

  • Witcher – Another really fun game

    I thoroughly enjoyed Witcher Enhanced Edition when I played it a couple years ago. It is an RPG with seamless battles and lots of action, including fighting (fist fighting competitions), loving (sexy time!), and killing of many, many creatures and people. The plot was fine, but forgettable, but it kept the game moving. You play a “Witcher” a badass, but sterile warrior whose job is to right wrongs and screw all the eligible women. You have a number of powers that you attain by increasing your level, but the actual killing will be done with your swords. Yes, swords, plural. It turns out your regular sword is good for killing people and animals, but you need a silver sword to kill monsters. You also choose a “style” based on the number and abilities of the enemy you’re fighting. And while you are fighting, it is important to carefully time follow-up attacks to maximize their damage (it isn’t too hard, so don’t be overly concerned). All these choices have to be managed during the battles and they turn out to make the fighting really fun. It never got old chopping enemies’ heads off. The game is quite violent and graphic, but it really connects you with the action more than most other RPGs (Dragon Age, Neverwinter Nights) do. This is a game where you can’t just play on autopilot, because skill and timing matter and are woven well into the gameplay.

    Witcher is also quite the bargain these days. It is often on sale, and I see it is only $20 on Steam. Well worth it!

  • Why I quit Eve Online

    Full disclosure: I changed the title of this post. I didn’t really hate Eve Online, but decided I didn’t want to play it, so I quit it.

    I really wanted to like Eve Online. I really did! I was about done with my free trial sometime back and was thinking about starting the paid subscription. I had joined a corporation with a couple of nice guys from Ireland and was progressing through the ranks and through missions nicely. I had just earned enough rank to buy a cruiser, if I remember. Then I decided it wasn’t for me, gave all my stuff to my corporation buddies, and left the game and never looked back. Here’s why:

    Eve Online is a massive multiplayer space game, which immediately sounds awesome. But it is also an RPG.That means hits are calculated based on dice rolls rather than your dogfighting skills. In fact, there is no dogfighting at all. But that was OK – I like RPGs. Essentially, you can choose targets, and select an orbit distance so the computer approaches to that distance and then stays that far away. And you reload when your guns are empty. The computer takes care of all the aiming and fighting. But that’s okay, it’s an RPG. I could live with that.

    Your ship has a shield, which protects the hull, then when the shield is gone, it has armor, which also protects the hull, then when that’s gone, hits eat into your hull. If your hull goes to zero, your ship explodes and your escape capsule flies off. Your capsule can be shot down, in which case, you’d better have a recent clone in storage or else you lose a lot of abilities. Insurance can help replace your ship, but not what was in the hold or mounted to the hardpoints. You can go reclaim your wreck to recover some gear if you can defeat whatever killed you in the first place.

    Eve Online looks pretty. The graphics are on par with most other space games (perhaps X3 is prettier, perhaps not). To get between areas within a system, you warp, which is very fast travel, and it is disconcerting when the game would warp you right through the space station you just left, for example. You don’t land on planets, but on stations near planets and moons. The stations have shops, repair bays, corporations, and assigners of missions. To travel between systems, you use jump gates that connect neighboring systems. And the whole universe is one live universe, though parts of it are “instanced,” so many of the other ships flying around and perhaps shooting at you are people, not NPCs.

    For the missions, you generally have to go somewhere, fight a wave of baddies, take an accelerator gate to a nearby area, fight more baddies, repeat a few times, then go report in to get your reward. If you are part of a team, you and your buddies go through this together, which is fun. If your ship is damaged, you can escape (sometimes – the enemy may prevent you from warping away!), but then you have to start the whole chain of gates over, though the baddies don’t respawn for a while.

    The reason I dropped Eve Online and never looked back was the travel time. The time it takes to navigate to the next acceleration gate in a mission just got tedious. It turns out that as you get bigger and better ships, they get slower, so the problem gets worse. My destroyer was slower than my smaller frigate, while my cruiser was slower than my destroyer. I realized that it would only get worse and never better as I progressed to bigger, “better” ships. So I quit cold turkey. If they ever change that hierarchy, I would be happy to try again, because I did have fun, for a while, but until then, I don’t like having my time wasted for me.