There is something special about the first time. Whether it's an image, a sound, a touch, or perhaps even a smell - there is something simply magical that sticks in the back of your mind, easily accessible for whenever you need to drift off and bask in the warm glow of reminiscence.

I can still remember my first: it was in the basement of my babysitter's apartment. Sitting atop a beat up couch straight out of the sixties, my feet barely able to touch the orange shag rug carpet below, I held it in my hands - a look of wonderment splayed across my youthful features as I stared at the images before me. I jerked it up, then down, and then up again, barely managing to contain my glee as it responded to every move of my sweaty hands.

Beside me my partner slapped the couch in frustration as the square ball squirted by his paddle and my score ticked up by one. Victory! Seconds later the ball reappeared on the television in front of us, cutting my elation short, and we both fell quiet as the Pong game resumed. The ball moved slowly at first, but got faster and faster as we made our returns, and it was only a matter of time before someone slipped up, another point was scored, and an exuberant celebration ensued.

I spent countless hours in front of the television in my babysitter's basement honing my reflexes with a simple up-and-down joystick. I remember loving every minute of black and white monochrome fun, and I've been a gamer every since.

When most people look at a high end gaming console, like the Playstation 3, they immediately think of games. Not so the US military, who see Sony's most recent entry in the console wars as the best bang for their buck when creating supercomputers. Via Ars Technica:

The US military has announced plans to buy 2,200 more of the game consoles, so that they can massively beef up the processing power of an existing, PS3-based supercomputer. A "Justification Review Document," which has oddly been deleted from Google since I found it but is still available at this cache link, explains that, "the new PS3s will be placed in a cluster environment with an existing cluster of 336 PS3s by connecting each of the units' one gigabit Ethernet port to a common 24 port gigabit hub."

The doc goes on to describe how the machine will run Linux, and it specifies that "commercial as well as in-house developed software code specific to these cell processor architectures will be studied. The objective of the architectural studies is to determine the best fit for implementation of various applications.

[...]

The reason that the PS3 is a more cost-effective way to buy Cell-powered GFLOPS than, say, the Cell blades that IBM actually makes specifically for supercomputing applications, is that the consoles come with a big, fat subsidy from Sony.

Sony sells the PlayStation 3 at a loss so that it can recoup the money on game sales, PlayStation Network digital sales, and Sony-supplied elements of the "value chain" like HD TVs, memory sticks, and so on. But the military isn't buying games or TVs—they're just taking their subsidy from Sony and running with it.

Read the rest over at Ars Technica.

Warning: This article contains spoilers. I would, however, appreciate if you did not spoil anything beyond the point of the game that I discuss.

Areas spoiled: Lothering, Redcliffe Village, Redcliffe Castle

Previous articles: 1, 2

Another week in and Fiona still looks the same, despite being up to 12 hours of play time. When I started these articles I was hoping to show the evolution of my character's progression through the Bioware profile picture, however I've found that gear upgrades in Dragon Age Origins are few and far between. While I've been able to get Alistair into some heavy chain armor, the rest of my characters look much the same as when I picked them up and it's starting to get under my skin. I've never been a loot whore, but I do like to get somewhat regular upgrades.... it probably doesn't help that I'm still playing Torchlight, and that game showers loot on players for the smallest deed.

It is also worth pointing out that my Bioware profile is a few days out of date. The character pages claim to only lag an hour or two behind your progress, but nothing that I've done since Monday is displayed. It is a little bit frustrating.

Anyways - on to my experiences.

On Lothering

- Upon entering Lothering I found out that there was a bit of a ruckus going on in the local tavern, and like any good adventurer I couldnt' help but poke my nose into it. Inside I was confronted by a number of Teyrn Loghain's men who were hunting for Grey Wardens. I took the direct route and beat the hell out of them. Once subdued I was presented with the option of sparing their leader's life, sending him back to Teyrn Loghain with a message, or killing him. Being more than a little miffed at the gall of the soldiers, I chose to kill him off, despite Leliana's disapproval of the whole thing.

- As if one new party member (Leliana) wasn't enough, I also decided to let Sten - the mysteriously murderous Qunari - out of his cage and allowed him to join the party. While I find the man far too emo for my liking, his back story intrigues me. I just can't believe that he'd murder a whole family and then stick around to be captured. Sten's been relegated to the camp site since I have no room in the party for him, but that suits me just fine for now.

- While running the quests in Lothering I seemed to constantly piss Morrigan off by accepting "goodie goodie" tasks. The woman just can't seem to get it through her thick skull that sometimes doing a seemingly good deed is a means to a more selfish end.

- I don't want to cooperate with the Chantry, however the plot keeps forcing me into it. I need to find a way to really betray them, and liberate mages everywhere. Hopefully the game will support long term scheming like this. I guess I'll find out.

On Redcliffe Village

- Once done with Lothering, I traveled to Redcliffe. This seemed like a logical progression with Arl Eamon being sick.

- The quests in Redcliffe village center around preparing to repel a nighttime invasion by the undead who have showed up in the castle, and involved a frustrating amount of leg work. I was particularly annoyed with the village smith, who wouldn't allow me to advance the storyline without promising to rescue his daughter. I damn near chose to kill the selfish bastard out of frustration; I wish the game had let me meet the assault without the smith's help.

- I ran into my first game bug while in Redcliffe. I was able to suggest to Ser Perth that he use some oil that I found to help in the defense of the town..... except that I never found any oil. I think that it may have been hidden in the trapdoor that I located in the smithy, however I never opened the door to find out.

On the Undead Attacks

- I got my ass kicked - hard - the first four times that I tried to defend Redcliffe from the undead streaming out of the castle. This marked the first time that I ever had even the tiniest bit of trouble in Dragon Age.

- The first time I learned the hard way that fire burns. Alistair and Leliana happily engaged their enemies while engulfed in flames, which lasted about thirty seconds.

- The next three times I survived the initial waves of enemies - often without expending any potions - before dying trying to defend the docks. I simply ran out of health potions too quickly, and I had not stocked up on enough supplies to see me through the fight. Since I'm rarely saving, I didn't want to lose any progress and so kept trying.

- I finally succeeded in defending the docks by ignoring the militia that were getting slaughtered by the camp fire (I couldn't save them anyways), and immediately moving to the end of the docks where I could have my back to the water. Finally able to control where the enemies attacked me from and how many assaulted me at once, it was much easier to handle and I drove back the undead invasion.

- After the Redcliffe debacle I sat down and set up some tactics for my characters. Until that point I had been running with default templates modified only to add a "drink health potion" tactic.

On Redcliffe Castle

- With the village secured I moved to find out what was happening in the castle. Almost immediately I had to deal with Isolde, the Arlessa, who reminded me of a snake oil salesman. Despite my better judgment I allowed her to take Ban Teagan into the castle alone, but decided to sneak in through a secret passageway after they had left.

- Inside the castle the first person you meet (who doesn't want to kill you) is Jowan - the blood mage that I thought was my friend in the mage tower. As you recall I wasn't too happy with him, however I still let him out of his cell in order to keep him on a short leash.

- I seem to have developed a weird set of looting ethics. If I can use an item that I find in a barrel/drawer/chest then I take it, otherwise I leave it alone. It seems odd that a game like Dragon Age does not punish theft heavily - especially when done in front of people - but there you have it.

- While fighting in the castle I really started to finally feel like I was understanding the combat system, and perhaps even beginning to master it. I made good use of my environment, and positioned my characters in such a way that Alistair took the brunt of the attacks, while Fiona and Morrigan flanked him to use Cone of Cold in a wide arc (often through doorways) and Leliana backed everyone up with her bow. Crowd control was used strategically instead of preemptively, and I started focus-firing targets down. It felt good.

- When the dilemma of freeing Conner, Isolde's demonically possessed son, presented itself I decided to allow Jowan to use blood magic to send me into the fade to battle the demon. This killed Lady Isolde (and pissed off Alistair mightily) but was consistent with my vision of Fiona, who really didn't like Isolde.

- Inside the fade I was tempted to take up the lust demon on her offer to relinquish Conner's soul in the short term by ultimately retain control, however I was worried that the decision would come back to bite me later in the game, and so I destroyed her. The fight against the demon was really well done, and I barely survived the encounter. Only my wide range of crowd control saw me though.

- When told that Jowan had been locked back up I didn't put up too much of a fuss. He probably deserves to rot for a while, the weaselly little bastard.

Going forward
So now I'm caught up. I'm back at my campsite (tacky DLC and all) after defending Redcliffe, but the Arl is still sick. I have a quest to find The Urn of Sacred Ashes to cure him, but I'm not sure if that's actually what I want to do first. I'll have to mull over my options tonight.

For a while now I've had an urge to buy one of the consoles that are targeted at core gamers (I already own a Wii for casual/social play), however the price has kept me away. With both the Xbox and PS3 seeing price drops over the past six months, I am leaning towards picking up one of the two on Boxing Day this year. That's where you guys come in - I am completely torn on which system to get and I was hoping for some insight from owners of either system.

Some of my considerations are:

Price
Without considering promotions (or bargain hunting), a top of the line PS3 will run me $350 right now plus another $100 for a second controller and a headset. A comparable Xbox 360 bundle (including extra controller, headset, and a game I don't care about) comes in at almost the same end price: $430. The Xbox 360 also has the added cost of maintaining an Xbox Live Gold membership if I want to play multiplayer games. PS3 seems to have a slightly better price point over the long term here.

Blu-ray
Quite simply put, if my wife and I want to upgrade from our old DVD player, a Blu-ray player is a logical choice. The PS3 comes with one built in, which adds some really sweet value.

Console defects
The Xbox 360 has an ugly track record of hardware defects including the much-maligned "Red Ring of Death", and studies peg the failure rate somewhere between 23.7% and 68.0%. Microsoft does provide a three year warranty on most failures, so the consumer is somewhat protected in the short term. On the other hand, PS3s are not perfect either - they can go belly-up with a "yellow light of death", although occurrences of this issue have fallen within normal failure rates for consumer electronics. What makes things tough is that Sony only provides a one year warranty, and thus if something does go wrong it will likely not be covered.

Game Catalog
The PS3 got off to a very slow start, and as a result it has a smaller game library when compared to the Xbox 360 as far as I know. My gaming tastes, as you can gather from this blog, tend more towards single player games, and specifically role-playing games, tactical strategy games, platformers, and story-driven action and/or FPS titles. I want to be certain that the console I choose will be able to provide me a steady diet of these sorts of games, and examining their back catalogs - especially the exclusive titles - is the only way that I can think of to do that. Of course that's a difficult task to undertake, so I'm hoping someone has a gut feeling.

The Wife Factor
Obviously to make a purchase like this I need my wife on board, and to do that I need to be able to convince her that she'll be able to find a way to have fun on the system as well. She's a big fan of puzzle games and role playing games, but also enjoys watching me play cinematic games (like Uncharted 2, I imagine). I have no clue which of the two systems is more "spouse friendly".

Longevity
I'd also like to figure out which of the systems is going to be around the longest. Sony has a good track record of building a system that lasts - the PS2 continues to sell well, but is the PS3 the same sort of beast? From a sheer hardware point of view I have heard via podcasts that developers are not yet taking advantage of the full capabilities that the PS3 has to offer in order to facilitate ports to the 360, but is this true? I've also heard rumblings that, despite claiming that this console generation will last a decade, a new Xbox is not far from being released.

A plea for help
If owners of either system (or, in the best case scenario, both systems) could offer up their thoughts on which console is the smart investment for someone shopping in late 2009 then I would be eternally grateful. I've listed off my criteria and the results of my research to date, but it's entirely likely that I've missed some details, acquired misinformation, fallen victim to the fanboy nature of the console wars, or simply forgotten to investigate a critically important area.

Thanks in advance.

I found this in my inbox this morning:

Andrew,

World of Warcraft is celebrating its fifth anniversary, and we’re inviting you back to Azeroth to take part in the festivities. Your account has been selected to receive 7 days of FREE game time - simply click below to claim your time and rejoin the adventure.

While you’re back in Azeroth, you’ll be able to enjoy the following new additions to World of Warcraft:

Grab your own 5-year anniversary pet, the Onyxia Brood Whelpling, just for logging into World of Warcraft during the celebration.*

Find the Night Elf Mohawk to get your Mohawk Grenades... and help make Azeroth look “goooood”.

Battle the newly updated level-80 version of the fearsome dragon Onxyia in Dustwallow Marsh.

Answer the Call of Crusade in Icecrown, and take on all-new dungeon and raid content.

And more to come... including the epic final confrontation with the Lich King himself.

We hope you join us for the World of Warcraft fifth-anniversary fun!

- The World of Warcraft Team

To which I can only reply:

Blizzard,

As much fun as I had in World of Warcraft for three years, your game and I have grown apart and I don't think that a simple anniversary pet is going to make any difference to me.

I used to think that you cared about me - and perhaps you did; certainly your game used to cater towards the level of difficulty that I enjoyed and we had a rollicking good time together while that lasted. But you moved on, and so did I - these things happen and I understand.

You tempt me with seven days of "FREE" game time, but I know that lurking behind that thin veil is a $15/month subscription fee that you hope to re-shackle me with. I'd rather not take that risk. I've seen how compelling, engaging, and affordable a good free to play game can be; Dungeons and Dragons Online provides far more value for money and demands far less time commitment to attain that enhanced value than you ever will.

You offer me new raids, but I've read how you plan to build on the hated WotLK raiding changes and make new dungeons self-nerfing, while at the same time drip-feeding the content to players and limiting attempts on bosses to artificially slow progress. Frankly you have only further convinced me that you do not understand what made raiding in the TBC era so compelling. Furthermore, the ramifications of these new raid mechanics are far from benign and top notch raiding guilds will have to struggle with the fallout. I want no part of that; I'd rather remember the good old days.

So no Blizzard, I won't come back. Not for seven free days, not for silly celebrations, and definitely not for more new raiding frustrations. I've found happiness without you, and I realize that you continue to enjoy massive success without me. We're better off apart.

With fond memories,

Andrew

As I've mentioned in the past, one of the ways that I keep in touch with my 10 year old godson is by playing Wizard101 with him on a weekly basis. It has been interesting to see him learn to play the game and to grow as an MMO player, especially since his main exposure to video games prior to our sessions was Pokemon on his Nintendo DS.

One of the most fascinating things to observe has been how he perceives the in-game microtransactions, and what motivates him as a player. We are both level 17 now and have unlocked all of Wizard City as well as a good chunk of Krokotopia; I also bought us each a $10 permanent mount a few weekends back, which has sped up our questing a great deal (not to mention given him a heck of a kick). In total we've each spent nearly $20 on the game since early April 2009.

It is very clear to me that the intentional abstraction layer that KingsIsle Entertainment puts between real life money and the Wizard101 item shop currency, "Crowns", is not only confusing to grown adults but also makes the cost of in-game items/areas unrecognizable to children. On more than one occasion I have heard my godson protest "but it only costs Crowns" or lament "oh no, this costs gold instead of Crowns" when considering in-game purchases. To him gold represents effort to obtain, whereas Crowns are much easier to come by - they replenish via the magic of Daddy's credit card whenever they run out!

Up until this week my godson had always cleared his purchases with me before making them. Even if he really wanted to unlock a zone he knew that he should ask me first, and we'd both then discuss if we wanted to set aside our current quests to experience some new content. So imagine my surprise when I log on yesterday and he announces that he bought a 60 minute fire elf transformation, and that it's the Coolest Thing Ever (tm) and that it only cost 75 Crowns!

Now, 75 Crowns is literally pennies - I can buy 2500 of Wizard101's in-game currency for a measly $5, but I'm betting that my godson wouldn't know how to begin to figure out the price even if he wanted to. (And besides, he's far more concerned that he only has 800 gold to buy treasure cards with.) Needless to say I passed along the tidbit to his parents just as a "head's up", and they decided that it was appropriate to re-explain why it was important to make spending decisions with me instead of independently. He wasn't in trouble (and I didn't want him to be!) - but he did get a necessary reminder that Crowns are real money.

KingsIsle entertainment isn't alone in make it easy for kids to spend money without realizing how much is at stake, or even that they are engaging in some form of microtransaction. The kid-friendly Free Realms has its "Station Cash" which at least sounds a little more currency-like, however they still deal in abstract points instead of dollars and cents; likewise, Turbine has their own special Turbine Points. MMOs are hardly alone in this intentional obfuscation, both the Wii and XBox 360 use proprietary currencies, as do many DLC-enabled PC games; even the current darling of the gaming world, Dragon Age Origins, uses BioWare points to hide the monetary nature of their transactions from the end user.

With the industry hellbent on papering over the fact that their games charge real money for additional services, parents must be proactive in educating their children. Unfortunately, there is no standard term for "real money" in games so far, and thus a case-by-case approach is unfortunately required.

While I can't wait to have children that are old enough to play video games, I'm not looking forward to having to constantly prevent the games industry from helping my kids reach their hands further into my wallet than I'd like them to. Hopefully the microtransaction/DLC model will have matured enough to stop hiding by the time that I get there.

Is there any better way to recover from a hellish day at the office than kicking back on your gaming system of choice, popping in your current favorite title, and enjoying a nice soothing beverage? I thought not.... and for the wine lovers in the audience, 8-bit Vinters has just the thing for you:

When listening to the latest episode of The Married Gamers podcast I heard an interview with Mike James, owner of 8-bit Vinters. He's started up his company to cater to the gaming demographic, and by all accounts he has not only come up with a novel product, but he's created a pretty damn fine wine to boot.

I'm thinking of ordering a few bottles for my wife and I, and may even pick up a couple of extras as stocking stuffers for my brothers, who are avid gamers as well.

Warning: This article contains spoilers. I would, however, appreciate if you did not spoil anything beyond the point of the game that I discuss.

Areas spoiled: The Joining, The Battle of Ostagar, Aftermath of Ostagar


When last I wrote I had just finished up the Origins story for my elven mage, Fiona, and was preparing to dig into the meat of the game. Unfortunately reality bit me in the rear, and I've only been able to invest another four hours into the game (bringing me up to a total of six).

I'm still having a blast with Dragon age Origins and have been pleased to see that the difficulty has been slowly ramping up. Here is another batch of random thoughts on the game:


- Yahtzee's review of Dragon Age origins is hilarious, as always. It inspired the title for this article, in fact.

- I've seen numerous complaints that the NPC speech in the game gets tedious after listening to it once. Here's a hint: press ESCAPE to force an NPC to shut up!

- Likewise, I heard one intrepid podcaster bemoan the lack of hotbar real estate. Pro tip: you can expand the hotbar to fill the entire bottom of your screen, opening up roughly a dozen new spaces to slot in skills.

- I have a love/hate relationship with the design decision to severely limit exploration in outdoor areas. One one hand, it's so old fashioned to artificially wall off entire areas of the game world (or to prevent players from walking into ankle-deep water). On the other hand, these limitations prevent me from obsessively combing every inch of every map in a desperate quest to find hidden items and areas - which saves me a load of time.

- The Joining ritual, which sees your character become a full-fledged member of the Grey Wardens, is powerful stuff. I have to wonder though, would it have been more interesting to have the player choose what to do after Daveth dies drinking the darkspawn blood instead of showing the explicit price of failure through Jory? Clearly Duncan couldn't just kill off your character, but the decision would have been far less black & white.

- Why can't any fantasy game make helmets look decent on a character? Every character that puts on a hat in a fantasy game immediately ends up looking worse. I turned them off back in World of Warcraft, I disable them in DDO, and it kills me that there's no way to hide head gear in Dragon Age Origins because they are terrible. My version of Alistair is stuck looking like a moron now, and I'm avoiding wearing a hat on Fiona.

- The movies for the Battle of Ostagar are slick and polished, although quite cliche. Tolkien would be proud.

- Speaking of the Battle of Ostagar, the tower sequence is a nice introduction to some tougher content, and the Ogre at the top is a particularly mean customer. He ended up not liking my mage at all, and I had to kite him constantly to keep from dying. (And yes, Alistair was trying to tank.)

- Also in the tower, the clickable ballistas and dog cages were a great way to mix up the experience, and add in a layer of strategy above simply moving around and manipulating skills on my hotbar.

- With the battle over with, I'm currently sitting on the outskirts of Lothering and deciding what to do next. I'm tempted to side with Morrigan and go after Teyrn Loghain Mac Tir first. The treacherous bastard deserves death.

Left 4 Dead 2 is easily one of the most hyped releases of the fall gaming schedule. Despite some rabid fans being opposed to a sequel, Valve's zombie shooter was anticipated by players of the first game since it was announced. As someone who has never played Left 4 Dead, I felt that I should at least check out the free demo to see what all the excitement was about.

Allow me to skip right to the point: after playing through the single player offering of Left 4 Dead 2, which took me about an hour, I was left utterly disenchanted by the game. The entire experience felt banal, immature, and more than a little bit predictable. Now I know that someone is going to leap in and tell me that L4D is all about the multiplayer experience and that playing with bots is doing it wrong, but frankly I stopped playing FPS games online back in university, and what I saw in this demo did nothing to convince me to change my ways.

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy a good shooter; one need only to look at the gobs of drool dripping of my discussions of Half Life (here, here, here, and here) and Bioshock (here) to realize that it's a genre I love, but Left 4 Dead 2 is so much weaker than any of those games.

The core of my problem is that the antagonists - the infected - are comedically grotesque, and do absolutely nothing to get my heart racing. They are littered around the level in clumps, and once killed off, periodically respawn from wherever the game's AI director deems appropriate. (I should note that the Director is a brilliant piece of engineering by all accounts, and I tip my hat to the developers who created it.) The sheer number of zombies that you are forced to mow down in a level is ludicrous, and since there are only so many skins that can be put on the models, they get tedious to look at quickly. Not only that, the zombie running animations are absolutely terrible, a flaw that is especially aparent when a huge herd of the beasts is closing quickly. This all stands in stark contrast to Bioshock's enemies, which are so superbly designed that they can often creep a player out with their voice alone; just knowing that a spider splicer is in the area is a cause for fear. Not so with Left 4 Dead 2's infected.


The other part of the demo that bothered me was that the shooting mechanics didn't feel as solid and satisfying as I would have hoped. Valve knows how to make a brilliant shooter - Half Life 2 feels perfect - unfortunately I never felt the same tactile precision when playing Left 4 Dead 2, despite trying out a wide range of weapons. The melee weapons are particularly poorly implemented - there was no difference in feel between wielding a machete and a frying pan.

In closing, I guess you can mark me down as an aberration. Unless Valve deeply discounts Left 4 Dead 2 (perhaps for a weekend sale), there is no way that I am going to be picking up the game. The demo did nothing to make me want to try anything further than the single player level I experienced - it was simply too weak. I'm left wishing that all of the resources that went into making this game were instead invested in Half Life 2 Episode 3.....

Steam: link
Demo parameters: One campaign, limited online play
Release date: Now
Cost: $49.99

A recent post on Kill Ten Rats got me thinking about the various methods of splitting up a game's population that are utilized in the industry today. At one end of the spectrum are the shard-based games that create solid barriers between different populations to prevent intermingling, and at the other end are single shard games that create a coherent virtual world that every single player shares. Between these two extremes lie a myriad of hybrid solutions, although there are two major population dividing solutions that are more commonly seen: highly instanced games, and shard-based games that allow players to migrate freely whenever they choose, with no penalty.

I thought that it would be interesting to examine these four different flavors of virtual world population division, and to consider the pros and cons of each.

Isolated Worlds

Description:
The player population for an MMO utilizing the Isolated Worlds model is broken up into one or more shards that function as fishbowls for the players within it. From the perspective of a player on any given shard, nothing exists outside of their shard's boundary; they have no way of affecting or communicating (in game) with players on a different shard, and likewise players on other shards cannot affect or communicate with them.

Exemplars: World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online, Everquest 2

Pros:

• Technically speaking, the easiest architecture to build. Developers can assume a maximum population cap, and design their software and hardware with those specifications in mind.
  
• Isolated communities facilitate the formation of player groupings (e.g. guilds) by limiting the pool of potential members.
  
• It is possible to configure different shards with different settings to provide more tailored experiences for different types of players. (e.g. PvP shards, Roleplaying shards, etc.)
  
• In non-deterministic games that allow a high degree of player customization (through housing, government, commerce, culture, etc.), it can be fascinating to watch how different shards evolve in different manners despite sharing a common starting point. (e.g. Darkfall EU vs Darkfall NA)
  
• As pointed out by Muckbeast, multiple shards allow a greater number of people to be "the best" at specific activities.

Cons:

• Once selected, players cannot change their shard (without an often steep monetary penalty). This makes it difficult to interact with friends who started up on different shards.
• If the game contains factions, shards may have too many or too few members of certain factions. The success that these factions subsequently attain only further exacerbates the imbalance.
• The community is divided into many sub-communities, often to the detriment of the overall game.
  
• During non-peak hours there will be less people around to interact with (group, pvp, socialize) since shards are scaled based on peak time capacity.
  

Bridged Worlds

Description:
In a similar fashion to Isolated Worlds, players in a Bridged World cannot interact with members of other shards during the course of normal game play. What differs is that at any time a player can choose to switch to a different shard, bringing all of their characters belongings with them.

Exemplars: Free Realms, Wizard101

Pros:

• Facilitates play with friends and family by eliminating the need to reroll characters on different servers.
• Allows a player to select a shard that has the desired population density to suit their mood. Sometimes playing in a crowd is a blast, while other times playing in relative silence can be liberating.
• Provides an easy escape from griefing, highly camped quests, and other MMO annoyances.

Cons:

• Difficult to organize players into social groupings (e.g. guilds) since each shard is walled of from the rest and yet players may hop between them.
  
• Ability to traverse shards can be exploited by griefers to preserve their reputation for longer than otherwise possible in other models.
• Can give rise to super-popular worlds and ghost towns as players migrate to the current hot area.
  
• Not ideal for PvP-based games because many players naturally gravitate towards a winning situation, and thus lopsided shards will often result in the absence of strict migration restrictions.
  

Instance-based World

Description:
In an Instance-based World there is no notion of shards, but instead the game dynamically adds and subtracts instances of content as the player population naturally fluctuates. Players are randomly assigned an instance of the content upon entry into the game world, but can choose to occupy the same shards as their friends and/or guildmates if desired. The player can communicate with anyone in the game world, however is restricted to only interacting with those few people that they share an instance with.

Exemplars: Champions Online, Guild Wars

Pros:

• The game world always seems to be populated with a optimal number of players. This (theoretically) eliminates over-crowding and the associated lag.
• If designed correctly, less expensive hardware is needed on the back end due to the fact that the load can be divided to a much finer degree than possible in other systems.
  
• A player can, with minimal organization, interact with any other player in the game simply by choosing a shard to enter together.

Cons:

• Such an extreme use of instancing often removes the feeling of "massive" from an MMORPG.
  
• There is a general sense of disconnect from the community. Unless a player is a member of a static group or the game is very small, they will tend to see different people all the time due to the shifting nature of instances.
• Specific sub-communities are far more difficult to create. (For example, there is no "RP shard").
  

Single World

Description:
All players are present in the same virtual world and can interact with each other freely; there are no artificial walls set up to prevent segments of the population from interacting with each other. While the Single World model of virtual worlds is the oldest of the models, it quickly fell out of favor as graphical MMOs developed a significant player base. Outside of small niche games, only CCP has designed a truly shard-less game on a large scale.

Exemplars: EVE Online, MUDs

Pros:

• The most "realistic" model of a virtual world.
• Allows for large scale emergent game play elements to evolve, given sufficiently complex game mechanics.
• Events in the virtual world are shared experiences by the entire player base, which allows a coherent history to form.
• All players in the game are potential group mates, or guild mates, or enemies.

Cons:

• Technically challenging to design and implement. The EVE Online Dev blogs provide a small look into the enormous complexity of the task.
• Hot spots within the game world can quickly become laggy and unplayable if too many players gather in the same spot.
• Increased competition for the game's resources (gathering, NPCs, real estate, etc.) which can create difficult game balance and/or usage issues.
• Sets up a single point of failure for the entire game. If an important piece of hardware fails, the entire population is affected.

(Many thanks to Bill for his input on this section.)

Feedback
As stated at the beginning of this article, there are many different ways of splitting up a game's population, and the four I listed are by no means the only possibility. Feel free to discuss others in the comment thread, and also augment the exemplars/pros/cons lists with your own thoughts. I will update this article with reader feedback when time permits.

Back in my teenage years I used to play pen & paper roleplaying games at least once a week, sometimes as the Dungeon Master but more often as a normal player. It's been a long time since I actually tried to force myself into the mind of a character in a format other than text, however tonight I will be participating in what will hopefully be the first of many permadeath roleplay sessions with my Dungeons & Dragons Online guild on Thelanis server. The plan is to meet weekly with our characters; we'll see how things go.

What follows is a bit of back story for the character that I will be using for this static group.

---

The night, which had got off to such an auspicious start, was well and truly ruined. Sitting on a hard tavern chair, gritty smoke mingled with the scent of spilled ale combining to tickle my nostrils, I tried hard not to squirm under the withering glare of the guard sergeant who stood over me, arms crossed.

"Name?", the gruff soldier demanded in an authoritative tone, easily projecting over the nervous shuffling of the tavern staff who had finally emerged from the kitchen to start cleaning up the mess. No doubt the guards positioned throughout the establishment helped assuage their fear despite my continued presence.

"Aylmer," I muttered, averting my gaze before adding, "sir". It would be easier to face the interrogation if I thought that I was in the right; easier if I didn't realize that I had lost control again; easier if I knew that the drunk was going to survive his burns.

"Aylmer, eh?" the sergeant echoed and, as if reading my mind, stated, "You damned near killed a man, halfling - maybe still will - and burned this place up real good." I remained silent, not wishing to relive the past half hour. A scowl darkened his sturdy face as he continued, "and then you had the gall to stay here until we showed up. What the hell were you thinking?"

"I...." I trailed off, the statement aborted before it had even really started. How could I possibly explain what had happened to a military man who had as much experience with magic as a swine does with knitting? It was impossible. I lost control; I let the drunk goad me into a rage, and I let the fire out of the tight little box that I had sealed it into. Once out, it consumed me like it did all those years ago. How could I explain that?

Against my wishes - perhaps aided by the stench of burning that hung in the air - my mind lurched back to my childhood and those terrible events that shaped my life ever since. The horrible fight with Gabriella, my older sister, over the toy blocks. The anger I felt as she pushed me away from her little castle, and the sound of my juvenile voice as I shouted "I hate you!" at her. The sting in my shoulder as Gabriella slugged me, hard. The horrified look on her face as her rough smock burst into flame, and the terrified scream that tore from her lips as the fire seared back her skin, revealing the white bone beneath. The tiny tombstone erected behind our family home, and the last words that my father ever spoke to me: "You are not my son." I remembered it all.

My mother, bless her heart, forgave me. Her doting love - though it cost her dearly every night when she argued with my father - saw me through the next few years. Despite the loss of Gabriella she found a way to forgive me, and told me so every day. When it finally became too much for her my mother sent me to the academy, where I finally learned to control the fire and, with effort, lock it away deep inside me. Though I never saw the dear woman again she wrote me every fortnight while I remained at the school.

"Well then? Out with it. Quick now." The sergeant's irritated voice snapped me back to the present. I knuckled my eyes, smearing dirty soot across one cheek.

"I don't know, sir" I stumbled, fatigue drawing out my words, "I don't remember anything." A lie - it was seared into my mind just as surely as Gabriella's dying shrieks. "Why would I stay here if I did this on purpose?"

The sergeant grunted something unintelligible, disgust obvious on his face. "Hey Smeadley, get over here and help me tie this one up," he ordered a freckle-faced guard who was pacing nearby, "it seems that Mr. Aylmer here wants to pay the station a visit so he can explain himself properly."

Clearly the night was only going to get worse....

Machinarium, by the independent developer Amanita Design, is a point-and-click adventure game (developed in Flash) that recently won the "Excellence in Visual Art Award" at the Independent Games Festival. This is a game that I have been meaning to play ever since Steam released a free demo and the guys from the Idle Thumbs podcast discussed how much they enjoyed it on their show.

The best part of Machinarium, hands down, is the absolutely gorgeous visuals that the developers have obviously spent hours crafting. Every level in the game looks like something out of a quirky comic book, and the characters that inhabit the levels are equally charming. The objects that you interact with do not stand out in a disjointed manner (as with some games), but neither are they particularly hard to spot. The entire atmosphere is extremely pleasing, and immediately makes you want to explore the world.

Unfortunately, the visuals are the extent of my praise for the title. From a game play perspective, Machinarium manages to be exactly the type of point-and-click adventure that annoys me to no end.

First and foremost, the puzzles are far too frequently of the non-obvious variety. Instead of using my head to deduce how to solve a challenge with the tools at hand, I was constantly forced to randomly click around the screen to identify all of the hot areas, and often had to randomly try objects on areas with no idea ahead of time whether or not they would work out. This is exacerbated by the fact that Machinarium has no tooltips for anything, nor any way to examine places/things to gather more information about your surroundings. Instead you are left with random bits of unidentifiable junk in your inventory that you must combine in an arcane manner in order to bypass obstacles. (Level three is the worst example of this.)


Adding to the frustrating experience, the game lets you walk around the screen and only as you approach an object that you can interact with does the cursor change from a pointer to a hand. This means that puzzle solving involves a lot of wandering around the screen wasting time. It would make for a much better experience if you could detect hot spots from anywhere on the screen, and your character automatically walked to them as you clicked instead of forcing you to walk around hoping to locate interaction points.

The final straw - at least for me - was the tip feature in Machinarium. Many point-and-click adventure games have a hint button that you can press to receive a gentle nudge in the right direction. I got stuck in the final level of the demo after acquiring both obvious items on the screen, and after fifteen minutes of fruitless toying around decided to resort to a hint. Clicking the button brought up a book with three buttons, one of which invoked a mini arcade game where (it turns out) you had to guide a key through a bunch of spiders and into a lock. Unfortunately nothing in the game tells you this, and it took numerous failed attempts before I realized that the "start" button on the book doubled as a "shoot" button in the arcade game. After finally beating the little mini-game the book opened and revealed the entire solution to the puzzle! I didn't want that - all I wanted was a little tip (akin to what Monkey Island would give)... but there it was, a step by step guide to solving the entire level.

For a game with such a promising beginning and high accolades from the Independent Games Festival, Machinarium is an unmitigated let down. There is no way that I would pay any money for a game with such a poor demo, let alone the $20 that the developers are asking for. In the end, Machinarium is just a disappointing Flash game.

Steam: link
Demo parameters: three levels
Release date: Now
Cost: $19.99

I picked up Dawn of War 2 when it was released back in February, played lightly for a couple of weeks, and then abandoned the game as my World of Warcraft addiction prevented me from properly enjoying anything else. It's a shame really; I played Warhammer 40k, the tabletop game that Dawn of War 2 is based on, extensively for a number of years and I still love the flavor of the world that Games Workshop has built.

Unfortunately playing Warhammer 40k is an expensive and time consuming hobby, and eventually I got annoyed with the constant price hikes and forced obsolescence of my existing miniatures as new rule sets were constantly created to keep consumers buying. Like my Magic: The Gathering collection, my Dark Eldar and Tau armies were sold off and I quit the game cold turkey. Unlike Magic, Games Workshop has been more than willing to license their intellectual property for affordable video games and so I have been able to recapture some of the flavor in electronic format.

At its heart Dawn of War 2 is a real time strategy game, however unlike the majority titles in the genre it focuses strictly on controlling a small handful of squads and eschews concepts like base building and resource gathering. Instead, DoW2 adds squad progression (via experience point gain) and a robust loot system to the traditional RTS mix, an unexpected blend for many genre faithful. Thankfully, the result is an extremely intense combat-heavy game that is surprisingly tactical and pleasantly addictive.

While I was skeptical at first, it was actually extremely liberating to not have to worry about resource gathering and base building, and just get down to combat right away. Squads are small (between one and four members), possess unique abilities, and are led by a unique character. The average mission is action packed and lasts between ten and thirty minutes depending on the objectives and the approach that you take (stealth vs zerg vs move from cover to cover, etc.), which makes Dawn of War 2 a relatively manageable pick-up-and-play title. This speedy game play is a far cry from the marathon-like levels that most RTS games are comprised of.


Perhaps one of the most satisfying aspects of Dawn of War 2 is the character advancement system. Taking a page from role playing games, each squad earns experience as a battle progresses and at the end of the mission all squads earn bonus experience based on your overall performance across three categories (percentage of the enemy destroyed, percentage of your own forces preserved, and speed). Squads gain levels after accumulating a certain amount of experience, which in turn allows them to invest points in one of four traits which grant extra combat effectiveness and abilities. In addition to the level-up system, enemy squads drop random loot occasionally and each mission has a loot reward. These weapons, armor, and accessories can be equipped to your squads to further customize them and change how they behave on the battle field.

Gameplay wise, Dawn of War 2 rewards sound tactical choices, careful planning, and a knowledge of the opponents that you expect to face. Prior to starting a battle is crucial that you consider your opponent and objectives and ensure that you deploy complimentary squads that are properly equipped to the field. For example, if you are fighting the Eldar and know that they have grav tanks available then you may want to bring along your devestator marines with a missile launcher equipped, as well as your assault marines. If, however, you're meeting the Tyranids then you are better off using heavy bolters on your devestators and switching out the assault marines with your scouts.

As previously mentioned, combat is both fast-paced and tactical. It is important to position your squads intelligently and take into account concepts such as firing lanes, cover, support, and paths of retreat. Once combat begins it is a much more active process than in most RTS games. Since you control only a small handful of squads you must pay close attention to each of them, and micromanage their abilities. Proper use of cooldowns on abilities like frag grenades, sniper kill shots, and shielding arrays are often crucial to surviving massed assaults. This is easier than it sounds: you will rarely have your forces spread more thinly than will fit on a single screen, and so all you need to do is cycle through your squads (bound to number keys) and make sure that each is in the proper location and using the proper ability.



One of the only failings of Dawn of War 2 is the game designer's insistence on creating "boss" enemies at the end of nearly every mission. These unique enemies are usually fought alone, and completely change the rules of the game. Instead of worrying about precise positioning and ability use you are forced to react to a series of special abilities that target random areas and/or directions on the screen. For example you may need to frequently move out of the way of a charge, away from a plethora of grenades, or out from beneath an incoming barrage. These boss battles do nothing to enhance the game, but instead detract from the otherwise superb tactical combat experience. Smart movement is replaced by random dashes to safety. Ugh.

My other minor quibble with Dawn of War 2 is that, near the end, the game starts to bog down in a swamp of optional side missions and territory defense scenarios. Perhaps this was just the unopened copy of Dragon Age sitting on my desk speaking, but I found the single player campaign far too long, and eventually I just stopped playing the side missions to plow through to the end.

Those two minor gripes aside, I still firmly believe that Dawn of War 2 is a breath of fresh air for the RTS genre. I would encourage any strategy game fans or Warhammer 40k enthusiasts to pick up a copy of the game and give it a try if they haven't done so already.

Warning: This article contains spoilers. I would, however, appreciate if you did not spoil anything beyond the point of the game that I discuss.

Areas spoiled: Mage Origins story

The past week nearly killed me: I had a pre-ordered copy of Dragon Age sitting on my desk, yet did not want to start it up for fear of abandoning Dawn of War 2 for the second time. I'm a completionist, you see, and hate not finishing games. Thankfully I pounded out DoW2 a few nights ago, and so last night was finally free to play some Dragon Age.

My character, Fiona, is an elven mage. While I don't usually play female characters in games like this, I was not a fan of the look of male elves, and so decided I'd try playing a lady.

Some random thoughts on my first two hours of play, which saw me through to the end of the mage Origins story:

- Within five minutes of starting the game I already had a male NPC hitting on me, which was awkward given that the voice acting was fairly convincing. I was creeped out enough to avoid that particular NPC for the rest of the Origins story, although I didn't tell him to go take a leap when the option was added.

- The persistent blood splatters that quickly gather on player characters is neither realistic looking nor particularly necessary. It was utterly silly to watch Lily (an otherwise soft spoken Chantry initiate) engage in normal conversation while seemingly oblivious to the fact that she was coated from head to toe in gore. I have no idea what Bioware was thinking when they incorporated this feature; it seems like blood for the sake of blood, and detracts from the experience.

- While I appreciate the wide range of dialog options, it would be nice if the game learned what sort of responses that I was inclined to choose, and did not simply hand me a laundry list of all possible options. For example, I could play Fiona as a racist elf with a huge chip on her shoulder if I wanted to - which is great - however after not selecting those options for two hours it would be nice to see them drop off the quick list of dialog choices (or at least be hidden by default, with a "more options" button available).

- The Harrowing was extremely well done, especially how it ends with Mouse. I hope to come across him again, because he seems to be a much deeper character than I initially thought.

- The repercussions of choosing to freely help Jowan (which I was really leery of) made me squirm. I tried to find proof of my friend's alleged misdeeds but couldn't and so gave him the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately that was a mistake. While I didn't want to fall on my sword completely, especially in front of Greagoir, neither was I completely innocent. The dialog options presented through this part of the game forced me into some hard choices, and I can easily see the results turning out differently.

- Interestingly, a co-worker of mine is playing an elven mage as well and decided to rat out Jowan. While this didn't change the sequence of quests that he ran, he was not treated nearly as harshly as I was at the culmination of the quest.

- Is it bad that I'm thinking I want to specialize as a blood mage eventually? Already I'm picking spells that have that flavor: entropy will be my primary school, and I'd like to collect a lot of the ice spells from the primal school. I don't want Fiona to be a goodie-goodie; I'd prefer her to be fairly self-interested, although not to an extreme.

- Small-scale combat feels really fluid so far. I appreciate the ability to pause the action whenever I want and issue specific orders. I've definitely found it helpful to have multiple crowd control spells even through the early quests - both Paralyze and Blizzard can be used to stop an enemy for a significant amount of time.

My wife works all weekend, so I suspect I'll have a lot more to say soon!

If anyone is feeling particularly benevolent I'd love to receive one of these:


I mean, who wouldn't want a tauntaun sleeping bag? I know that I sure want a snugly carcass to curl up in.

Although I picked up Dragon Age Origins on release day, I have yet to try the game out. I didn't want to abandon any of the games that I was playing at the time, and by all accounts DAO is a life destroying quest of epic magnitude. That said, I'm now in a position to start the game and was hoping for some advice from readers who are already into it:

What difficulty level do you recommend playing Dragon Age Origins on? Normal or Hard?

I consider myself a skilled RPG player and a fairly good tactician, however I have no patience for micromanaging details past a certain point. I'm looking for a challenge, but not a graveyard parade.

Any and all opinions appreciated.

Remembrance Day (or Veteran's Day, as it is called in the United States) has always been a big deal for me. When I wrote my general purpose/political blog I took special care to try to learn a bit about the men and women who have fought for my country in the past (and who actively do so today) and share it with my readership. Although I consider this journey of learning and remembering to be a year round affair, it always seems more poignant and immediate as November 11th approaches.

This year I'll be at work at 11:00 when the Remembrance ceremony is taking place on Parliament Hill here in Ottawa. Although I have attended in the past, it's simply not possible to do so this year; work is too busy, and I just finished chewing up a week of holidays. I'll miss watching the veterans march proudly through the streets; I'll miss applauding them as they brave the chilly Canadian autumn weather to parade another time for us all; I'll miss the mix of emotions - from pride, to grief, to wistful reminiscence, to relief, to peace - that adorn those honoured faces.

Perhaps - although it will be a poor substitute - I'll attend the moment of silence that is being organized on Dungeons and Dragons Online's Thelanis server by Bekki. While I suspect that it will be difficult to convince the server population to participate en masse, it is still a nice touch and worth supporting, in my opinion.

As a final note, I would like to share a pair of letters from my great grandfather, Norman Peterkin, who fought in both the First and Second World War. I transcribed both of these letters after they were given to my mother by my grandmother, and they paint a picture of a brave man ready to sacrifice absolutely everything to defend his country.

The first was written to my great grandmother back when they were only dating. Norman was barely old enough to enlist, but felt duty calling:

Montreal, Que
Nov. 23rd 1915

My Dear Fairfax:

Your letter [to hand] to-day and I need not tell you how pleased I was to hear from you.

I had late leave of absence to-night to attend a party at the home of one of my Comrades in arms. It is now twelve-thirty. I left the party early in order that I might write to you.

Perhaps what I am going to say will be a surprise to you - perhaps it will not, but you surely have known for quite a while that I think a great deal of [....ripped page....] so when your letter came to [....ripped page....] in it that you did not like to think of the time when my Regiment sails, I made up my mind that I would be just as frank with you. I am very sorry in more ways than one that I feel it my duty to go, and one reason that makes me feel that way is that it is quite possible that I may never return to see the one girl that I love, namely yourself.

So when your letter came to-day I thought perhaps you might reciprocate my feelings. I want to ask you if you will be my wife, provided I come back from the war and am not crippled in any way. I would not ask any woman to marry a cripple, so I put it that way. If I come...

[....half page (or perhaps a full page) is missing.....]

...their young brother leaving when I leave. Five other chums are dead "somewhere in France", blood calls Fairfax and I must answer that call. Can you blame me?

Now be sure and send me your ring size and I will see that Santa Claus sends you the signet ring.

This letter seems mostly [.....smudged.....] but I am writing on my knee and some of the lads are trying to play some pranks on me. The bugle will blow "lights out" soon, so I must say Good-Night.

With much love,

Norman

P.S. "To be Continued" - soon.

R.S.V.P.

This second was penned by Norman to his wife, Fairfax, and their young children.Even after witnessing the horrors of World War One first hand, he again responded when his country came calling a second time:

St. Jerome, P.Q. - April 28, 1941

Dear Family,

By the time you read this I will be away from home on the start of my journey overseas to do my bit for my family and Country.

As I sit here thinking I realize what it means to myself and yourselves to have me go and I just want you all to know that night and day my thoughts will be with you and I will be looking forward to the time if God in his goodness spares me to come back to you. I thought a long while about it before joining up and I still think that if you all are to grow up and have a normal life that first of all it has to be made safe for you and your children. It's no use if this thing has to be done all over again in another fifteen or twenty years just when you are bringing up your families and your Mother and I are gone.

When I am away I want all of you to think of your Mother and give her of your best.

Clare - I look on you as the head of the house and I want you to give the younger ones good counsel and advice and do all in your power to take my place.

Margaret - carry on so that I will always be proud of you and carry the family name high in every way.

Sumner, Delmer, and Rilma - do you best every day to help your Mother and try and make things easier for her.

Remember, in doing this you will be helping me over the rough spots because whenever I think of you it will be made easier for me when I know that you are all soldiers holding the line at home.

Every night a supper time I will think especially of you all and I want you when you sit down to the table to say Grace in your turn and at the same time as Grace just add that Daddy and Ian will be brought home safe. Will you do this for me - and I will be doing the same where I am.

Now good-bye and God Bless You all - Mamma - Clare - Margaret - Sumner - Delmer and Rilma.

Write me when you can and always be proud come what may of your Husband and Daddy.

Despite being torpedoed on his way to Europe, Norman lived to fight through the Second World War and returned home to his family. Sadly, this brave man passed away years before I was old enough to know the significance of his contribution to my country. I would have loved to thank him in person.

Never forget.

I just returned from a weekend trip to Vermont where I visited my cousin and her family. One of the highlights of any visit is getting to spend some face to face time with my godson, who has just recently turned ten. Since they live a fair distance away I don't get to see him as often as I'd like, which is a bit of a shame.

Traditionally, god parents are supposed to ensure that a child's religious upbringing is properly carried out, however since neither my family nor my cousin's are particularly religious I seem to have perverted this role into something much more geeky: I have been ensuring that my godson's video game upbringing is adequate.

It all started two or three years ago at Christmas: with my cousin's permission I bought the boy a copy of Pokemon for his Gameboy Advance. Up until then he had never tried a Pokemon game, however that single gift resulted in a prolonged Pokemon obsession that he is only now starting to climb out of. His collection includes all of the GBA and DS games - including the variant versions - as well as Pokemon Battle Revolution for the Wii, and the Wiiware Pokemon game. Merchandise-wise, the kid has a horde of plastic toys of all of his favorites, and used to draw unique Pokemon in his spare time.

As if one obsession wasn't enough, earlier this year I started him down a new (and perhaps more insidious) path.

Back when I played World of Warcraft I used to have an alt on my cousin's server where I would play with her and her husband every so often. After a while they decided to introduce the game to their son, who liked it well enough, but he wasn't capable of playing the game by himself (at the time) because it is fairly complex. After a while I made a character to play with him and we started having a once a week static session where we could play for a couple of hours while chattering away on Ventrillo - it was a great way to get more interaction with my godson.

When I let my WoW subscription lapse in May the weekly gaming sessions with my godson were in jeopardy, however I had recently learned of Wizard101 and so we decided to give that game a shot together.

It quickly became apparently that Wizard101 had one huge advantage over World of Warcraft: a nine year old (at the time) could grasp one hundred percent of the game's core concepts with very little coaching, and could proceed to control a character with absolutely no outside assistance. For the first time in a year my cousin could just log her son on and let him play an online game with me without having to stay around to help play his character. It was an excellent revelation.

Fast forward six months and my godson and I have been playing Wizard101 nearly every week (with a one month break in the middle while they moved house) and are now level 16. In that time we've each spent a paltry $10 buying areas, and are well into Krokotopia. And he's hooked. Absolutely over the moon obsessed.

I hadn't realized it before visiting, but once again I've managed to foster a video game obsession in my godson. He talks incessantly about the game to anyone who will listen, has decorated his room with hand drawn Wizard101 pictures, has crafted a teleporter to Krokotopia out of a cardboard box, has recreated his entire spell deck (Myth/Fire) in hard drawn cards, has put together a second handmade deck for his three year old sister (Life/Ice), and has created a series of "quests" for the two of them to play. The boy is well and truly wrapped into the world.

While I was visiting I showed him the ins and outs of Wizard101s crafting system, and then as an extra special bonus, I bought him a $10 mount (he chose a broomstick) for his character. Considering that he's been raving about wanting one since they were added to the game a month or two ago, he was utterly thrilled.

As much as some people believe that video games (and specifically MMOs) can make a mess of a young life, they have been an amazing way to engage my godson and interact with him despite living four hours away and in a different country. We both look forward to the chance to chat and game together for a couple of hours each week; a normal phone call would not even begin to compare. And instead of spending all of his time online (which his parents would not allow anyways) it has given him a creative outlet at home as well - he is constantly trying to hone his drawings to faithfully reproduce bits of the world that he has so much fun in.

I can only wonder what sort of thing I get him hooked on next.....

I dropped by my local EB Games on Tuesday to pick up my preordered copy of Dragon Age Origins, and walked out with my wallet a bit lighter than I'd intended:

Whoops.

A Boy and His Blob was purchased primarily due to nostalgia - I'm old enough to remember the original game on the NES - but also because I'm fairly certain that my wife is going to have a good time playing this re-imagining of the game as well. Likewise, Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a pure wife-driven purchase; she has been eying up the sequel (The Diabolic Box) for weeks now, and I convinced her that we should play the original first.

I'll be starting up Dragon Age Origins just as soon as I finish Dawn of War 2.... I already have a character ready to go, and I completed Dragon Age Journeys weeks ago for the unlocks.

---

If you have a few minutes, I highly recommend checking out the latest post on That's a Terrible Idea. Evizaer discusses different skill-based progression systems using Ryzom and Darkfall as two unique examples. It's an informative read.

---

The big kerfuffle in MMO land today is the new World of Warcraft Pet Store. WoW has been offering an increasing number of supplemental microtransactions for a long time (server transfers, gender swaps, renames, etc.) but apparently fluff pets have pushed many people past their breaking point.

My opinion: Any game that forces you to pay for a subscription in order to play should NOT use microtransactions to allow players to obtain unique items or services that cannot be gained via normal game play.

Tobold is probably also right: the floodgates have been opened.

Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures is perhaps the best co-op game for couples ever created. My wife and I just finished up story mode two nights ago, and it was the most fun that we've had with a game together in a long time. She already wants to go back and get 100% on all of the levels, however I've distracted her with A Boy and His Blob for now.

Lego Indiana Jones is an action-puzzler that follows all three of the original Indiana Jones movies: Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Temple of Doom, and the Last Crusade. Each movie is broken down into six levels in which you play the part of some of the major characters in the film - rendered entirely in Lego blocks - to act out an important scene.

The controls on the Wii make use of both the Wiimote (to attack and jump) and nunchuck (to move, perform actions, and switch characters) and mercifully no waggling. Game play is a combination of beat 'em up, platforming ,and puzzle solving in equal parts. Everything feels tight, fast paced, and most of all fun.


While I'm sure that Lego Indiana Jones is a fine single player game, I have yet to play it that way, and in fact the entire experience seems to have been created with two players in mind anyways. In each level the players have control of between two and four characters (six in free play mode) which can be freely rotated through. My wife usually maintained control of all of the secondary characters while I played primarily as Indy.

Puzzle solving involves locating and combining various elements in the world to overcome an obstacle, or else using character-specific abilities to navigate the environment. For the most part these puzzles are straight forward, but there were a few instances that stumped my wife and I for upwards of twenty minutes at a time, and at least one that sent us to Game FAQs to cheat. On top of the required puzzles, each level in the game contains ten optional artifact pieces to locate as well as a parcel to find and deliver; puzzles surrounding these rewards were often far more devious, and after our story mode play through we had only found 30% of the total secrets.

Co-op combat is just plain silly fun. Unlike many games, Lego Indiana Jones embraces friendly fire, and it is entirely possible - even likely - that players will kill each other by accident during a whirling melee. I can't begin to count the number of times that my wife nailed me in the back of the head with a shovel..... over time I began to think that it was on purpose.


One of the things that Lego Indiana Jones got really right is the notion of forgiveness. Players have infinite lives, and all that is lost by dying is some of the Lego coins that you have collected (which are completely optional, and are only used to buy fluffy unlocks between levels). This lack of punishment is so important in a game like this because it allows the two players to have completely different skill levels and not impede each others progress and continue to play together. My wife sucks at platformers and generally dies the first five times she tries to make any given jump - however she was not excluded from progressing through the game for failing, and so was able to continue playing. Even more interestingly, on jumps that she got too frustrated with all she had to do was temporarily give up control of her character and the game would make the jump for her, provided that I had already cleared it - she could then rejoin penalty-free seconds later.

Lego Indiana Jones really is the perfect co-op game for couples, and I've heard great things about the rest of the Lego gaming franchise. Once we are ready for a new Lego game we'll be targetting Lego Star Wars..... and my wife has told me that she already has dibs on Jar Jar Binks.

Back in my high school days I had way too much disposable income and absolutely no sense of responsibility; as a result I blew hundreds (thousands?!?) of dollars on Magic: The Gathering cards.... and became a pretty darned good player. It wasn't long before reality hit and I needed to pay for higher education, and so my M:TG collection was sold off for way less cash than it was worth. I never got back into the game; the price tag is far too prohibitive with inconvenient real life commitments like a student loan and a mortgage, not to mentiopn all of the other day to day bills.

So excuse me while I hold my breath in the desperate hope that Magic: The Gathering Tactics is not simply another way to milk cash out of addicted consumers, and is instead a wonderful blend of PC gaming and collectible card game play. Not that Wizards of the Coast are saying anything yet... the best information we have is contained in a teaser trailer over on Shack News. But a man can dream, can't he?!?

Insta-update:
Noooooooooooooo!!!! That sound is a little piece of my soul dying. From Wired.com:

Unlike the recent (and excellent) Xbox Live Arcade game Duels of the Planeswalkers, Tactics will incorporate the collectible mechanics that make the card game tick: Players will expand their teams by purchasing booster packs and starters, then use their new acquisitions to customize their spellbooks.

The pay-as-you-go model should be familiar to those who played Magic on table tops, or the online PC game. And the gameplay will likely feel something like Dungeons & Dragons: Miniatures Game, the tabletop war game also published by Wizards of the Coast.

Tactics will feature characters and spells from the universe of the popular collectible card game. Players will be able to take their customized team of creatures to battle through solo scenarios or take them online to compete against others.

Regular expansions, tournaments, achievements and rankings are also forthcoming.

Money-grubbing bastards. Is it too much to ask for a version of Magic: The Gathering that won't put a person into the poor house?

Just a note that I have this coming week off from work (first week off since last Christmas!) and so posting on Teeth & Claws may be less than regular. My wife and I have a mammoth list of things to do during our staycation, which should keep me running around the city and surrounding countryside quite nicely.

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Like most of the gaming blogosphere, I picked up a copy of Torchlight last week and have been slowly puttering through the story. In all honesty, the main reason I bought the game now instead of waiting was that I wanted to be part of the conversation for a change instead of talking about a game long after everyone else has moved on. I'm eagerly anticipating listening to my favorite podcasts talk about their experiences this coming week, and have already enjoyed the bustle of blog activity that Torchlight stirred up.

After hearing from various sources that normal mode is trivial, I decided that my first play through would be on Hard mode (although not Hardcore/permadeath). My character, Thursday, is a level 11 Alchemist following the Lore path. I have a herd of pets joining my trusty lynx, Thimble, in raising hell while I sit back and direct traffic. Since I don't want to waste skill points enhancing any magic skills outside of my core summoning set I've invested heavily in Dexterity in order to wield dual pistols. I felt all smart about coming up with that solution until I moused over a Lore skill deep in the tree and discovered that I would eventually receive bonuses to dexterity-based weapons anyways.

As far as my impressions go, I think that Torchlight is a fun update of Diablo that has all the same strengths and weaknesses of its predecessor. It is an excellent pick up and play game that lends itself to filling half hour-sized holes in the day, and can easily devour far more free time if you are not careful. On the other hand, it is just as shallow as the Diablo games, and I know that it will not have any strong lasting hold on me.

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My wife and I have been doing a lot of gaming recently. We just polished off the story mode of Lego Indiana Jones (Wii) this afternoon, and she is insisting that we replay all of the levels in free play mode to get 100% on the game. That is not something that I would bother with if it was just me playing, but if she wants to be a completest then who am I to stop her? I'll be doing a full post mortem on the game soon.

In other wife gaming news, we bought a new laptop for her today and one of her big requirements was that it had to be gaming-capable. My wallet cried, but again - who am I to stand in the way of gaming? She really wants to try World of Warcraft or another game of that ilk, so I'm planning on trying to steer her towards Dungeons & Dragons Online. Torchlight also caught her eye, and I expect I'll be giving Runic another $20 shortly.