Not-so-weekly Playlist

Quick post-mortems on the games I've been playing lately:

1.) Puzzle Quest 2 (DS): Either they made this game way too easy, or I am the best Puzzle Quest player ever to be born.  And I don't flatter myself to think it's the latter.  I set the game to "hard" and on my first storyline playthrough, didn't lose a single fight.  Not a one.  Admittedly, this may be because I picked Barbarian, and because I knew how best to combo some spells from a long-in-remission addiction to the first game, but...

I did create a second character, Assassin class, and she's lost two fights in the under-10 game, so there's something to it.  Maybe it's just horribly unbalanced?  Other than that, though, I've enjoyed it.  I miss some of the features of the first (sacking cities, money from cities, consistent foes after completing the story) but overall it's not a bad game.

2.) Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within (PC): When the acting makes you long to have Tim Curry's southern accent back, or when every. single. sentence out of any character's mouth is instant MST3K fodder... well.  I love me some old-school adventure games and this is a definite great example of the FMV era of the mid and late 1990s, but it's a profoundly silly game and it wants to be serious.  As I said, accurately, on Twitter... #gaygermanoperawerewolfvoodooking

 3.) Divinity II: Ego Draconis (PC): I wrote before about how much this game hooked me.  And it did.  Except the end-game stage is flat-out awful.  Just like in the first game, an 80% awesome title falls flat when you cross the Line Of No Return.  Also, it's the buggiest thing I've bought in 15 years.  Twice I had to go back to an hours-old save to recoup after game-halting bugs, and once I had to send my save file to Larian for them to fix it for me.  Not.  Cool.  Even worse?  I hear they have a patch ready to go for most of these bugs but have been withholding it in North America until their DLC launches in October.  Their excuse is that they're not allowed to release too many patches for a 360 product (and this was a dual-platform release).  I'm actually quite pissed off at Larian over this one.  Translation errors and small bugs I can handle.  But game-stopping errors?  Multiple times in multiple locations across the game?  Lrn 2 QA, dammit.

Look at me! I'm awesome!

I've been playing Puzzle Quest 2 on my DS.  (And I never thought I'd say this about anything, but actually I wish it were harder and more difficult.)  And I rocked a completely awesome combination of spells, luck, and strategy, and in a single turn did over 100 damage to my opponent.

And the thought I had was, "Damn.  I kind of wish we had a 360, because I want everyone to know!"

I am not a competitive gamer, I'm really not.  I tend to prefer single-player games or, barring that, cooperative multiplayer.  If I absolutely must go head to head with someone, I prefer it to be anonymously or pseudonymously online.  Why?  Because I really, really hate losing to people I know -- and I also hate winning over my friends and spouse.

But even I understand the full appeal of achievements systems, and why XBox Live,Steam, the PlayStation Network, and Windows Live all have them: because if a totally badass event happens alone, at home, and no-one sees it... did it ever really happen?

There's a phenomenon I've touched on before, where all gaming to an extent becomes narrative gaming.  Tetris may not have a story, but we tell stories about our own experiences playing it.  "I totally hit level 9 and then, like BAM!  The blue piece I needed!"  And in this sense, we gamers are no different from people out there playing soccer, or watching football, or going fishing, or driving to work.  We assemble stories around us.  But instead of a photo of us holding up a 5' long fish, we have virtual achievements and scroll through pages of pixellated trophies.

Alas, I, on my DS at home, get no trophy.  But believe me, y'all: it was this big!