Monday, June 30, 2008

Deja vu, or Something Like It

This last Sunday I slipped and fell in my kitchen. Ow. Apparently the fridge decided to leak water onto the tile so when I walked into the kitchen my feet were taken out from under me. I decided to just try and sleep it off but this evening I was in more pain than I was earlier and had extensive swelling and bruising on my left arm.

I decided it'd be best to just go ahead and go to the doctor for x-rays, but by the time I got up to go, the local office was closed. Blarg. So I spent a good hour or so in the E.R. instead. Much to my surprise it wasn't busy at all and I got in and out pretty fast.

Turns out I broke the same bone in my arm that I broke 2+ years ago. The Scaphoid. I am currently in a half-cast and will be visiting an orthopedist in about a week for further testing and probably a massive cast, like they gave me the last time I broke that bone... all the way up to my shoulder. Ugh.

Thankfully my spine and tailbone don't appear to have been broken, but I pulled a shitload of muscles along the spine so I'm in a lot of pain.

Monday, June 16, 2008

Fond Farewells

My family leaves this morning in about... 4 hours. I'm really going to miss them. We don't get to see each other nearly enough.

My aunt and uncle are such great people. They're so humble and generous with their time and money. Though my aunt has retired she still sees patients simply because they trust her and don't feel comfortable with another doctor. She sees them for a fraction of what they should be paying her, too. Quite possibly the most selfless rich people I know.

And my grandfather, there aren't enough wonderful words to describe him. I've never had a father, but in hindsite: I've never needed one. I've always had my grandpa to count on no matter what. I think he's probably one of the greatest people I have ever known and ever will know. He has seen so much in his life, and his stories are fascinating -- even the illegal ones.

We're all planning on taking a family trip to Ireland in the future to visit "the home land." That will be a remarkable trip. Despite not having a date set in stone yet, I can't wait. To be honest we could be traveling to anywhere and it would be an awesome trip just because we're all together, but Ireland is a place my grandfather has always wanted to take us to.

I should be returning to my regular schedule now, which is quite irregular by normal definition.

Spore: A Preview

For the uninformed, the genius minds behind greats such as The Sims, SimCity, SimAnt, etc. have been working on an entirely new game. Spore. In Spore you begin as a single celled organism and over the course of your play time, your creature evolves to the point where it comes out of the water onto the land. Eventually your creature even begins socializing with other creatures forming alliances, or if it's more your style you can just kill the other packs/herds of creatures.

You'll go from controlling a single creature to a whole society of your creatures, all 100% customized by you along the way at each various stage of evolution. Where is this intriguing game you ask? It's not out yet. But! That doesn't mean you can't have a little fun in the mean time. I got my hands on the Spore Creature Creator a few days early, a little demo that takes you through the basics of creating a creature and lets you give it a test run and see all the little animations your new life form can do. All totally unique to however you design your beast.

I downloaded this at... 2:00am and here it is going on 4:30am and I'm still playing with it. You can't even do much else besides be creative and play around, but it doesn't even matter. It's still fun. I can only imagine how entertaining the complete game will be. So what did I do with my time? I created just a couple creatures to test out. Most notably: Mintoad. As if watching Mintoad hop around and dance wasn't cute enough I discovered a magical button that spawns baby versions of your creature... and they imitate anything they see mommy (or daddy) do.

If you're interested in Spore at all, you should definitely go snag the Creature Creator when it becomes available for public download.

Friday, June 13, 2008

Scarce

I'll be scarce from today until Monday because I have family in town visiting. Yay!

Thursday, June 5, 2008

So, Age of Conan

AoC is an exciting game to play and is the cause of my absence lately.

Smoothest game (MMORPG) launch I have ever been apart of, despite a couple of issues, and I have been there at just about every launch in the last decade. No crashes, no lag, no roll backs. So now the pros and cons, as always!

Pros:
The game has lovely graphics.
The sound is remarkable. Music, ambience, voice acting, all of it.
The game mechanics are innovative and intuitive.
Combat isn't a complete snore fest.
There is no auto attack.
Instancing alleviates zone lag and crashing.
Quests are group-friendly.
The lore is superb based on the works of Howard.
The game's plot is grade A.
The emotes are amusing and smooth.
Crafting is complex and the rewards are great.
The economy seems heavily player based.
Mounted combat.
The dance system is very unique and fun.

Cons:
Despite the game's lovely graphics, customization is lacking.
The game mechanics make combos slow and ocassionally useless in PVP.
Due to no auto attack I actually have to pay attention all of the time.
Instancing can cause some initial confusion amongst groupmates and guildies.
Also instancing means less people to talk to/kill per area.
There are no custom emotes (currently).
You cannot craft until level 40.
Money is very hard to come by.
There are some glaring class imbalances that have yet to be worked on (most bug-induced).
Dancing isn't friendly to all races/genders. Some people look downright ridiculous.

All in all it's a great game that could use some polish. While it's good now it'll be excellent in a few months once the kinks have been worked out. Even with the current state of the game I'd recommend it, it's fun.

Edit: The game has gotten progressively worst in the months following launch. So much so that the game now has a free-to-play option (with limited classes and races available for free).