And for the past week I have spent my energy on many different games. Many. Different. Games.
War Worlds expansion continues. The north corner of my “square” is getting better defined, and as I continue to move it southwards I get closer to having a large area being worked north-to-south. I still have my ships moving in that direction all along the loose line from Inkdium to what is left of Curufin, and have passed 6.5 million population.
Mafia II turns out to be quite a bit of fun. The game is advertised as a shooter, which it is in a certain sense, but I have a much stronger feeling of being inside a Mafia movie instead. Taking care of the family, and business, and crushing those you don’t know under your bootheel. So far I’ve gone from rags to riches, to rags, twice. I assume I’ll end up with riches again but it’s a scripted movie game so who knows for sure.
One thing driving me crazy about Steam is the screenshot method. When I take a screenshot, it gets saved in some crazy numerically-named folder deep in the folder tree. This has more or less sapped my desire to get screenshots during the games, which is silly, but I have to be honest with myself. I want to find it two or three deep in a clearly marked folder, and anything else just doesn’t work for me. Now, what it works well for is publishing screenshots on your Steam feed, but otherwise, meh. This is why there’s no images in this post.
I now have the “Pre-Alpha” version of Carmageddon, which is a lot of fun in a limited sense. I can take out pedestrians and race the other crazy personalilties, just like 20 years ago when the game first came out. It needs work, no doubt, and I’m waiting for additional updates. I was misinformed thinking that the game was finished and ready to play. And so the excruciatingly long lead time for my initial Kickstarter investment continues to tick off.
I have reached Level 23 in Fallen Earth and moved on to S2 – The second map, where there be many factions and the large city of New Flagstaff. I’ve done some adventuring, but I decided to catch up on my tradeskills. I now have an ATV as well as my horse, and I’m currently working on making my last Ballistics book before I hit 90 skill, which is the next point at which I can unlock more recipes. I’m running low on materials (finally) and at some point will need to go out and do some more harvesting. With 7 red chips (7 million total, I believe) and nothing auction-wise to spend them on, I am buying plenty of Scrap Paper, Pens, Scrap Lead, and Weak Botanics to continue the tradeskilling spree.
I have only three tradeskill slots given that my premium has expired. This is encouraging me to log in for a few minutes at a time, whenever I know I should be done making whatever was last in the batches. Then I set up an additional 3 recipes and quit the game. Play some more War Worlds, etc, then when the time is right head back into the game. Planning to rinse and repeat until I’ve done everything I can with tradeskills. So far, the only limiting factor is collecting salvaged wood – I know where to collect tons of the level 1 materials, but I need a bunch of salvaged wood as well. I’m sure I’ll figure it out later.
Having bought the latest expansion whose name escapes me, I went ahead and fired up Civilization 5 again. This time I am Ramkhameneanang or whatever the Siamese leaders name is, on Warlord level with Terra map and no goody huts. I am doing OK and trying to get the hang of the new artistic winning method. Without the goody huts the game is significantly harder, but more fun, and we’ll see where I end up when it’s all said and done. A win will tick off another achievement, and Civ5 always has the advantage in that it’s easy to interrupt. Now looking forward to Civilization : Beyond Earth.
I’ve pretty much finished the good parts of Flatout 2, and plan to start the next game in the series which is Ultimate Carnage. Quick races when you can squeeze them in are pretty good, and easily shareable with kids.
What happens when you die IRL ? Good question. But I now have my failsafe plan in the event that I should pass away suddenly – IRL friends (2 of them) now have the keys to this blog and are supposed to post to it. I think about Jeff Freeman every so often, and his amazingly fun blog which has disappeared after his passing. I do want all my regular readers to know if I disappear suddenly, why. Not that it’s expected, but you never know.
And with that, back to Real Life outside gaming.