Friday, August 10, 2007

Visiting

I've been going through my bookmarks: seeing which are still valid (I have hundreds! - hoarder :o ), tidying, organising, etc.. This led me to check up on some old games, and associated with this was making sure my desktop was up-to-date, and updating some programs, including games.

Due to this, I checked up on Thang and was pleased that it loaded pretty quickly with no fuss: I'd expected waiting ages for a huge update.. hmm.. maybe that's not such a good thing.. heh. Anyway, the only thing I noticed from my brief visit was that you can now turn the screen/view 360 degrees, instead of the 180 or whatever it was before.. There may well be more than that that's 'new', but that's all I noticed..

Eternal Lands had to get a little visit too and I had to reinstall, due to the program I had no longer being used/supported. There seemed to be a lot of updates, according to the text, but things looked the same and although it's a lovely little game I would like to 'visit properly' one day, I wasn't in the mood for trying to remember what to do!

A 'games crawl' (kinda like a pub crawl but without the booze.. or pubs! :P) would have to include Planeshift - for me. This is one of the most frustrating games I think I've ever come across.. Why? because I've had such a good feeling about it ever since I first found about it, but I always found it a nightmare to play - well, actually getting to play always feels like a major accomplishment!! This time, as previously, it wouldn't update and didn't want to work, so I visited the website and realised there was a new build - good news, but I wish they'd sort out the updater so you don't have to uninstall and reinstall the darn thing every time!! I believe they are in the process of fixing that.. maybe they have, but I couldn't find it on the site. At least I managed to log into the site this time - I even had a nightmare with that last time I tried! I want to love PS but it won't let me!

What else did I visit.....? Oh yes, Puzzle Pirates! Login problems again, but it's more my fault than theirs, due to only visiting these games rarely. PP is a cute, easy little game. For me there are two 'levels' of approach when playing it. You can either get properly into it, making efforts to meet people, progress, and whatever else it has to offer.. Or, like me, you can just jump in and mindlessly have a go at the puzzles. I usually play the 'Bilging' puzzle ('Tetrisy' kinda thing) for a few minutes before logging off, lol.

I double-clicked the Rappelz icon, but after a few minutes of watching it try to download/update and thinking it didn't look like it was having much success, I gave up. It's just not appealing enough to me for me to put any effort into trying to get it going..

This may be an unkind or unfair thing to say, but I can't see me ever getting really engrossed in an Asian game.. They seem 'shallow', often bypassing any attempt to get someone fluent in English to check the content before pumping it out.. support seems a little lacking, but that's probably just a symptom of the modern world.. They do always look very pretty, but.. I'm forever seeking something with 'depth'.. like in the MuD, Cosrin I used to play. Some of the quests were deep.. I remember spending weeks up in a tower with a couple of friends, just trying to figure out how to get to the next bit, cross-referencing clues, going crazy to work it out.. I miss that, along with the depth of emersing yourself in your character... anyway, I digress.....

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