What I’m Playing

Work, what a drag, am I right? The past 2 weeks have been pretty rough, work-wise, with the days really kicking my butt. Even this past week – a nice, short four-day work week thanks to the Memorial Day holiday, tried to do me in. With people out of work on vacation and one guy on bereavement leave because his father passed away, it just wasn’t a pretty week. Throw into that mix a gentleman who is sort of on the last legs of his career, going on about 20+ years with the company and in the mindset of, “Hey, man, I’m just riding it out until retirement.” THEN, take that and mix in the part where he gets extremely moody when he starts getting stressed out and voila! Instant crappy week.

Thankfully, I’ve got my video games to escape to. Not that I’ve much felt like playing anything – what with working 14 hour days, oh, except for this past Friday where I worked 16 hours, came home around 7 in the morning, slept ’til noon then got back up and went in for another 8 – oh, happy days!

So, what am I playing right now that helps ease a little of that stress? Well, let me whip out the old gaming list, here.

On iOS, I’m playing Dark Avenger, a dungeon crawling game that requires an internet connection as it has live chat and multiplayer abilities – kind of like Diablo 3. It’s a basic hack-n-slash with real-time PVP, epic loot, customizable combat abilities. I really don’t know much about that last part, but I’ve been playing here and there for a few minutes at a time. It’s a fun little distraction when you’re in need of a quick fix.

XBox 360 – Lego Indiana Jones, The Original Adventures. Dr. Jones and Lego. I picked this up as a 2-pack from Gamestop. It came with Lego Indy and Kung Fu Panda. My son and I like to play the Lego games together, but I’ve been playing this one a bit more on my own since it’s usually late at night after I get home. I’ve actually had to look up some solutions to a few puzzles because this game is a bit more difficult than I am used to in a Lego game.

And on my Mac, I’m still enjoying Minecraft. Continuing to add to my creative mode game, I’ve also started a survival mode adventure. My son enjoys playing this on the Xbox, and I play with him, too, but we don’t agree on design choices  I like to build a giant, good-looking house and he likes to put torches all over the ground, make diamond mines nearby, scarring up the landscape, etc. I’m a little more picky than I probably should be.

So nothing fancy, just a few simple games to kick back and relax with after a long, hard day. Maybe next week I’ll swap over to some movies in my Netflix queue and give the games a break. Meanwhile, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go build something.

1st Injustice DLC Released Today

The Boy and I have been enjoying the DC fighting game, Injustice, since it’s release. From the creator’s of the Mortal Kombat series, Injustice is a beautiful game to look at, in my humble opinion. If I had to single out a complaint or two, it would be that the moves are a bit stiff looking and the characters, upon really close inspection, are glossy and plastic looking. Other than those two, though, Injustice is a fun game that lets us whoop some butt as our favorite DC characters.

When the game was released, it also offered a Season Pass for $15, which I picked up as the first ever season pass I’ve bought. It did promise, upon purchase, that you’d have access to 4 downloadable characters, alternate skins for a couple of characters (Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Deathstroke). Today, the first of the DLC characters was released.

Lobo, the intergalactic bounty hunter, is our first additional character via the Season Pass. He is also available for 400 Points for the other folks. The download also comes with Batman’s Flashpoint skin, which is pretty cool. Now, there was also two addition releases today. This is where my complaint for this post comes in.

The other content is skin packs. Bad Girls comes with skins for Wonder Woman, Harley Quinn and Catwoman. Teen Titans pack comes with Deathstroke, Cyborg and Raven. These are only $2.99 each (240 points. My question is, couldn’t these have been included in the Season Pass? For $20 I would have still purchased it up front, throw in 3 skin packs (getting one free). I think that would have been an awesome deal, especially since we are now left hanging waiting for our next three DLC characters.

Maybe I’m just being a crybaby. Maybe I’m just impatient. Maybe I need to be happy with what I’m handed and move on. Either way, I’m kind of left wondering if, in the long run, it was really even worth getting the Season Pass, even for a reasonable $15. If I’m going to have to spend more points on the game anyways, it seems kinda pointless.

Minecraft Lego

Our son received his last birthday gift yesterday. He wanted the Minecraft Lego set, which the Lego Store here in Nashville, TN doesn’t carry. They were nice enough to order direct and save us shipping & handling charges.

Tiny little pieces make for sore finger tips. The project is complete, though and a cool little display piece.

Take a Break from my Crack Addiction

I’m sorry, did I say crack? I meant to say Minecraft.

Always behind everyone else in the fad department, I have just recently discovered the amazing world of Minecraft. It actually wasn’t even my idea to buy the game! My son, out of the blue, started bugging me to buy this game on Xbox Live. He had somehow stumbled across videos of it on Youtube and it led to him wanting to try it out. I was hesitant because I didn’t think he would really enjoy it. Also, it just didn’t seem my type of game and I thought it was going to be a waste of money.

Two weeks later, my son enjoys the game, but I’m freaking addicted to Minecraft. I’ve bought the Mac version because I read the worlds were much, much larger. I’ve got castles, villages, pyramids and all this stuff going on. Oh, and my son is enjoying it to. The only thing I will say is that I enjoy Creative Mode much more than Survival because, to be perfectly honest, Survival Mode freaks me the crap out.

The mobs are scary, especially when you come across a Creeper. Damn you Creepers! The Boy and I lost half of our house twice yesterday on Xbox Live because we disturbed a nest of mobs and they kept popping up on us. Creepers and Endermen. Oh, and the screams of that one thing in the Nether? Creepin’ me out, dude.

Once I figure out where my screenshots go on the Mac, I’ll post some pictures of my little world.

Setting Aside Our Differences: SimCity & Me

** SimCity, Sim City, SimCity 5, SimCity 2013, whatever you want to call it, I’ve seen it in all variations over the past month. For the sake of this post, I will refer to is as SimCity <– there’s no space there, and I kinda like it, it’s edgy and cool. **

SimCity, The Game

The last blog post contained my first impressions of the latest SimCity. Since then, I’ve continued to venture into the constantly online world of EA’s newest title. Has my opinion changed? Have I learned anything from that first day or two of play? Are my cities and regions prospering?

Yea, pretty much.

I have focused on one region that contains three cities, and all three are doing well. I’ve connected them via seaport, train and highway. They share services (buying and selling). And there seems to be a nice cohabitation of the tri-city area. My money and population is growing, but sadly – and this is a constant negative against the game – my city remains the same. Buildings are now self-upgrading based on what the sim-citizens require, industry booms or collapses based on supply and demand and availability of workers. But my little city will never expand or grow larger because of the limited space imposed by the games designers.

The limited city size could be altered. I can easily see an expansion pack, for a little fee, offering players the ability to expand their cities from current size to a slightly larger grid size, a-la any Facebook game you can pretty much name. There is just enough space between the cities that this could easily be implemented.  I look forward to see if this might be the case in the near future.

I’ve come to love SimCity, it’s a great addition to the series. No, the “always on” connection isn’t cool and shouldn’t even be there, but it is and we aren’t going to sway EA’s mind on the matter right now. There is a learning curve for folks like me, but once you get the basics down – where to put what buildings and how to upgrade your government buildings to better your city – and learn to make decisions on your transportation system and industries, things start to come together. Don’t let the rumblings of the Internet bring you down without trying it for yourself. If you do, you are going to be missing out on a pretty sweet game, especially if you are a fan of the Sim-franchise.

The most infuriating flaw in the game is the supply/demand between zones. Commercial seems to play very little in the greater sum of things, but residential and industrial rule the roost. Citizens move in and take jobs in your industrial sectors. Industry then supplies freight to local commercial stores or exports it to other areas in the region. Where the sim-citizens can work, however, and how large the businesses can grow, are based on education of your people. Elementary, High, Community Colleges and Universities all come in to play there, as well as increasing the tech-level of your citizens/city.

Where it’s broken – in my uneducated opinion – is that, no matter how large your population may be, industry will flash that there just aren’t enough workers to fill the demand for jobs. This hurts the overall industrial sector of your city. On the reverse side, citizens will complain because there are no jobs to allow them to earn money, even though industry is dying for people to come and work.

It’s almost like real life. I constantly hear folks comment, “Oh, there just aren’t any jobs out there.” Oh, no, they’re out there. They just aren’t what you want to do So on second thought, maybe it isn’t broken at all. It’s just a reflection of our reality on a digital world.

SimCity – good game with the potential to be great. Try it for yourself, don’t let the hateful denizens of the interwebz make this decision for you. If you are stuck and don’t know how to continue or get out of a slump, check out Youtube, search forums before you declare it quits.

EA’s Origin

To play SimCity online, you must first open EA’s little slice of the web, named Origin. Akin to Valve’s Steam Store, Origin attempts to be a little hub for all your EA games. You buy a game from the digital store, it is registered in your Origin desktop software. Opening Origin, you can see the store, any sales they’re having, if any of your friends are online that also have an Origin account, and check out your EA game library. From the game library you can also download bonus content (free and for a few bucks).

Origin is a bit slow in loading, and since you have to open it before SimCity opens, connects and begins to load, it really slows down getting into the game. As part of EA’s attempt at damage control over the SimCity debacle, they have offered folks who purchased the SimCity game before March 18 and installed it, a free game download from the Origin store. Not just any game, however, but a game from a preselected list.

• Battlefield 3 (standard edition)
• Bejeweled 3
• Dead Space 3 (standard edition)
• Mass Effect 3 (standard edition)
• Medal of Honor Warfighter (standard edition)
• Need for Speed Most Wanted (standard edition)
• Plants vs. Zombies
• SimCity 4 Deluxe

An interesting mixture of games to choose from, especially with SimCity 4 thrown in with it’s awesome old-school offline play. For the record, I selected Mass Effect 3, just because I was curious how it played on the PC. So far, I’m not too hot on it with all the keystrokes and controls.

The Origin software is a distraction and kind of gets in the way of my gameplay. It makes the fact that SimCity requires online play that much more annoying since you have to open this, connect to the internet, then do the exact same thing with the game you’re trying to play. I could do without all that mess.

In Closing

SimCity is a good game with plenty of room to get better. Online play or not, there it is, to avoid the game because of it would be an injustice. Origin is probably the biggest disappointment, slowing down my gaming by offering one more hurdle to jump before settling down to play. The offer of a free game to folks who had to put up with launch problems was most definitely the LEAST EA could do, so thanks for that, I guess. There are still a lot of bugs to be ironed out. And, most importantly, I’m anxiously looking ahead to see what kind of future the game has and what EA will offer us in the form of DLC because, face it, you know it’s coming.