Metaphor Violation
Oct. 30th, 2009 08:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xyzzysqrlSome of you may have heard me, in the past, refer to my love for dungeon crawling action-RPGs. From Nethack and ADOM to Diablo 2 and Titan Quest, my odd fling with the Sacred series, the Champions of Norrath and Dark Alliance games, out to games like Fate and Shining Soul and so on and so on...
Look, what I'm saying is that I basically tend to LOVE these games. The reason why is fairly simple: I love getting random loot. I make out with materialism. I fawn over minute differences in item stats as they cascade to my feet from the bodies of the slain. I love killing a fruit fly and having a suit of plate mail jingle to the floor inexplicably. I love wearing hideously mismatched armor and carrying thirty swords, two axes, and a shotgun. I am a total slut for video game materialism.
Then I got Borderlands and Torchlight.
And vanished offline for like three days.
I am no longer a slut for materialism. Materialism and I are married now. We have 2d6 children. 75% will be normal kids, 20% will have some desirable modifiers, 4% will have an unfair advantage, and 1% will be a complete game-breaker of a kid and solo college courses at level 12 before knocking over a bank and reincarnating to New Game Plus the whole childhood arc again.
...
I don't remember what my point was, but I really like these games. A lot.
EDIT FOR QUOTE: "If you had no externalities to manage - that is to say, if you were not a father of two, for whom sleep is a rare thing, and precious - I don't know what could make you stop playing Borderlands. I honestly don't know how you could sever the thick roots that seem to grow out of the screen and claim the body, whose novel barbs anesthetize and then pierce the meninges, seizing control." -- Tycho, Penny Arcade.
Look, what I'm saying is that I basically tend to LOVE these games. The reason why is fairly simple: I love getting random loot. I make out with materialism. I fawn over minute differences in item stats as they cascade to my feet from the bodies of the slain. I love killing a fruit fly and having a suit of plate mail jingle to the floor inexplicably. I love wearing hideously mismatched armor and carrying thirty swords, two axes, and a shotgun. I am a total slut for video game materialism.
Then I got Borderlands and Torchlight.
And vanished offline for like three days.
I am no longer a slut for materialism. Materialism and I are married now. We have 2d6 children. 75% will be normal kids, 20% will have some desirable modifiers, 4% will have an unfair advantage, and 1% will be a complete game-breaker of a kid and solo college courses at level 12 before knocking over a bank and reincarnating to New Game Plus the whole childhood arc again.
...
I don't remember what my point was, but I really like these games. A lot.
EDIT FOR QUOTE: "If you had no externalities to manage - that is to say, if you were not a father of two, for whom sleep is a rare thing, and precious - I don't know what could make you stop playing Borderlands. I honestly don't know how you could sever the thick roots that seem to grow out of the screen and claim the body, whose novel barbs anesthetize and then pierce the meninges, seizing control." -- Tycho, Penny Arcade.
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Date: 2009-10-30 01:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-30 01:09 pm (UTC)Also my pet cat summons zombies and casts healing spells.
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Date: 2009-10-30 01:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-30 01:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-30 01:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-30 01:16 pm (UTC)I've been very enjoying Borderlunds too.
Sometimes Steam would tell me you were playing Borderlands or Torchlight, so I knew where you were. Or maybe it was your BF again. XD
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Date: 2009-10-30 01:32 pm (UTC)Oh, and while we're on the topic of geek religion, have you ever
heard the Good News aboutplayed Alternate Reality: The Dungeon? I'm not sure if you would've adored or despised the loot system, actually, but it did do some interesting things. For instance, monsters rarely if ever dropped loot that they couldn't plausible have carried -- e.g., if giant rats had any good treasure, it would invariably be ONE small shiny thing of the sort that might appeal to a rat, like a single GP or a gemstone. And if an enemy had a weapon, then DAMN IT, that weapon would still be there when you searched its body. None of this BS where you're attacked with a +5 Plasma Cuisinart that's mysteriously absent after the battle.On the other hand, there was an interesting limitation on equipment carrying. Not only did AR:D have a pretty realistic encumbrance system, there was a code glitch that made awful things happen if you were carrying more than 127 items (IIRC). So instead of just make it a boring limit, they threw in a beastie called The Devourer who would track and ambush you as your inventory approached the magic number. And unless you killed it REALLY FAST, it had the ability to suck items from your inventory -- even game-critical ones, which was admittedly annoying as hell, though they could still reappear as random item drops -- IIRC, only from Master Thieves, which was also an interesting case of turning a cheap kludge into a point of worldbuilding.
Also curious if you played either of the Wizard's Crowd games from SSI. These were Apple II era, 1985 or so? I always liked them because they used the same UI as SSIs hardcore war games, and things like character placement and manuevers in the tactical battles actually MATTERED. The difficulty of a battle dropped dramatically from "FUCK YOU" to "rather survivable" if you employed a little basic tactics. And the items were interesting, because weapon type, damage type, and magical elements also mattered a LOT. You had to put a lot of thought into who was attacking whom with what, and a lot of the vulnerabilities had a nice common-sense measure behind them, e.g. "Attack treefolk with fire- and lightning-enchanted axes. Don't even bother hitting them with clubs, idiot."
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Date: 2009-10-30 01:50 pm (UTC)As to SSI... I was always hideously BAD at any kind of tactical RPG/war game.
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Date: 2009-10-30 02:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-30 01:40 pm (UTC)So far, the main challenge is learning not to bite off more than I can chew. For the longest time, I couldn't play one of the Evil Bastard civs without dropping below 0% tech and watching all my forces go on strike. Last game, I kept myself strictly to 4-6 cities and razed the rest until we bumbled and threatened our way to Code of Laws.
I was amazed to discover that once we reached that point and got our expenses under control... we were actually pretty damn civilized and wealthy. @.@ And that, in fact, Vassalage is not a complete and utter waste of time. It's just a waste of time for us friendly turtles. :) I would've probably won the hell out of that game, with one enemy extinct and two crippled by 500 AD, if I hadn't gotten cocky, refused to sign treaties with ANYONE, and left a whole border undefended with the "peaceful" Persians...
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Date: 2009-10-30 01:43 pm (UTC)Hey, I deserve some blame too!
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Date: 2009-10-30 01:44 pm (UTC)*runaway*
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Date: 2009-10-30 01:43 pm (UTC)Ah well. There will be time for Borderlands once the price drops.
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Date: 2009-10-30 01:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-30 01:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-30 03:07 pm (UTC)I probably won't play it untill after I get Mass Effect, but I'm curious what it's like.
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Date: 2009-10-30 03:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-30 04:58 pm (UTC)Short version, I like it.
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Date: 2009-10-30 04:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-30 05:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-01 12:31 am (UTC)