Conflictium

I just finished the main quest on Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen.  As a game, it is good, but has some specific problems.  As a story, it is alright, but it lacks cohesion.  As a setting, it showed promise, but much of it went unfulfilled.

The story of Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen starts in a sea-side village.  The ancient dragon, Grigori, is released from his otherworldly prison to torment the children of men.  His first stop; a small fishing village of little value.  In the middle of his carnage, the hero confronts him by ineffectually stabbing the dragon with a sword.  Impressed with the hero’s courage, the dragon swallows the hero’s heart, forever marking the hero as the quasi-immortal Arisen.

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The new Star Trek movie is a fun one.  It has all the things a good Star Trek movie should have:  Kirk gets the girl(s) (cat-girls, no less), Spock gets to cut loose, Sulu is a complete bad-ass.  There are plot holes,and some interesting commentary on current politics.  This article contains spoilers.  If you want to discover the surprises for yourself while watching the show, then just know the movie is worth watching, and this review will be here when you get back from it.

For the more daring, venture on! (more…)

I hate paying full price for gaming hardware.

I have very good reasons for that:

1:  I am poor.

2: I am cheep, so even if 1 wasn’t true, I would still hate it.

3: It is fun to think I am getting a bargain, even if after time and frustration are added in, I am really not.

What do you mean, those aren’t “very good reasons”?  Shut-up. (more…)

Dragon’s Dogma.

I know I am late to the party on this game, but I am here now.  Dragon’s Dogma is a very fun game.  It has some specific failings, like the tedium of travel,  the jagged levels of difficulty, and the inconsistent autosaves.  Still, it is an enjoyable cross between Skyrim and Monster Hunter.

Dark Arisen, an expansion to the original game, just came out.  It eases the travel problem and adds a bunch of new gear and quests.  It smooths out quite a bit of what was rough about the original game, all for just $30 and a 12 GB download.

And there-in was the problem.  My original PS3 drive has been whining about not having enough room to store save files for a few months now.  There was no way I was going to get even a few megabits on that thing, let alone cram 12 GB in it.  It was past time for an upgrade.

Happily, Sony made this easy for us.  They even posted a handy guide on how to do it on their website.  It only requires a screwdriver.  This is the only tool I used for the entire operation.  It was my one friend for the whole ordeal.

All you really need.

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I was feeling alright about myself and my new goals until I walked out of my house and saw this:

A Sign of things to come?

Yeah, rain mixed with ice, never lucky.  The weird thing is, I see that a lot, and the frozen river quiet suddenly becomes more mobile right in front of my house.  I have to live in the strangest weather zone imaginable.

Anyway, in order to create and unstoppable war machine (for that is what I decided this sick world needs) I needed a large amount of iron.  The only place to find iron, of course, is underground.  Off I went into the mines, where I quickly found strangely colored mushrooms. (more…)

My last post detailed the joys of Hi-Resolution Minecraft mods.  They are a great time.  But something in the OptiFine description caught my eye, and I thought (as I frequently do), “There is no way that is true.”  Now, I realize that it is a bit ungracious to roughly critique work that is being handed out for free.  These guys do what they do out of love, and if the end-user doesn’t like it, they are out nothing more than their time.  But still, I had to know.

See…the talented creators of Optifine claimed they could double Minecraft performance.  The didn’t say something hazy like “Makes the game faster!” or something trivial like “Increases frame rates by 15 percent!” (really, if you are getting 10 FPS, a 15% increase gets you to 11.5.  Not really a massive improvement).  No, the went for the whole hog and said DOUBLE.  I just had to put that to the test. (more…)

Minecraft was recently updated to version 1.5.1.  Among other things, an update resets the texture packs.  I have been using Dustycraft for a while now, and while it is alright, there are some objects missing from the pack.  I figured I would try some of the high-resolution texture packs out there.

The first thing to know about Hi-Res texture packs is that Minecraft does not natively support them.  You need some sort of mode to adjust the Minecraft engine in order to display the new graphics.  There are a few out there;  MCPatcher is one, Optifine is another, and there are more.  I chose to go with OptiFine.  It has a lot of options that can help increase frame rate or improve quality.  You can find it here.  A Minecraft Forum page dedicated to it is here.

Once you have the thing (and I know those download screens are terrible.  The trick, I think, is to look for the most understated link and choose it),  you have to install it.  You are going to need a file manager that can deal with .jar files.  My favorite is 7Zip.  It is small, functional, and doesn’t require much of an install.  After that, you have to open the Minecraft bin folder, open the minecraft.jar with 7zip, delete the METAINF folder, and copy the CLASS files from the OptiFine download into the bin directory of the minecraft.jar.  See?  Simple, right?  You could make a backup of the minecraft.jar before getting started, but that is the wimp way.

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Geralt of Rivia.  Warrior, Hunter, Mercenary, Lover and all-around Bad-Ass.  The man is a legend in his own fictional time, and one of the damned coolest protagonists of any game, ever.  Andrzej Sapkowski conjured this character, and the brutal world in which he lives, in a series of short stories and novels that have inspired two video games so far, A film, a tabletop RPG and a third video game that is currently in the works.

Portrait of a badass.

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Day 9:

I needed a purpose.  Most stories of people surviving incredible difficulties show the survivor as being able to accept the reality of the situation while still maintaining hope that they would be rescued.  Getting back home to loved ones, or just making it through the next day gave them something to hope for.  They held fast to their purpose.  I needed to be no different, I needed a reason to live.  Right now, that reason is cows. (more…)

The rights of an individual versus the needs of society has been a contention for as long as there have been civilizations.  I can’t claim to have answer to the conundrum for every specific, but in general at least, Deus Ex:  Human Revolution gives a fair hearing to the many possible options.

Allow me to get into a little history of the series.  The original Deus Ex was released in 2000 by Eidos Interactive.  The game was revolutionary.  It wasn’t the first first person shooter with role-play elements.  It wasn’t the first FPS that emphasized stealth. It was the first to put it all together with a sense that your actions had an observable impact on the game world.  In one memorable scene, you could leave your dying brother to his fate, and hope that he could slow down the agents pursuing you, or you could stand and fight and try to save him.  If you saved him, he talked to you through the remainder of the game, if you let him die, that was it for him.  There were dozens of little options like that, and every one made the game greater. (more…)