Beta test!
CD Projekt RED, the Polish company who made the Witcher games, is hoping to break out the in-game card game Gwent into a standalone tournament game. I signed up for the beta, because of course I did. I love beta testing, with a special emphasis on breaking shit.
I’ve broken this one a couple of times, but I don’t see any place to brag about it. Perhaps because this isn’t even the beta — that’s scheduled for late October. This is a pre-beta effort to punish the servers and see what they’ll take. It’s not even keeping score. It’s no fun if they don’t keep score.
I’d say they have a ways to go to compete with Hearthstone — which I have also played since the closed beta. Though, to be honest, I’ve kind of dropped out of Hearthstone at the moment. One too many expansion packs have overwhelmed my limited ability to do sums in my head.
Oh, they said it was okay to post screenshots, but to bear in mind that a lot will change.
Me? Better by the day. Went in to work this morning. Still not fully myself, though.
September 27, 2016 — 8:29 pm
Comments: 1
Take care, big guy
Dude in the picture is Geralt of Rivea, a professional monster slayer and the protagonist of the Witcher books and computer games. I have spent a lot of time with this guy.
I know I’ve posted about Witcher 3 Wild Hunt before. It’s the last of the series and it is absolutely huge. Like, physically huge on disk (53 gigs, as opposed to Skyrim’s 14) and huge to play, with literally hundreds of side quests and places to visit. Which you can do in more or less any order you like, which makes it feel more like a place and less like a movie.
There’s even an in-world card game that you play against characters you meet, sometimes for important stakes.
The game has been an enormous hit, equally because it’s beautiful and because it’s well-written. Many of the side-quests are their own complete novellas. It’s won a shit-ton of awards. They announced from the beginning there would be two expansion packs (essentially, groups of new stories around a main story set in this world) and then that would be it.
I have just finished the second expansion.
And that’s it.
I feel surprisingly sad about it, the way I used to feel on the last page of a long book series that I enjoyed (I don’t read fiction any more; I’d almost forgotten that feeling).
Near the very end of the game, Geralt sits around a campfire drinking with one of his buds (he drinks a lot, which is fun) and shooting the shit about the future and he takes a big sip and says, “I think I deserve a rest, don’t you?” And then the sumbitch looks at me. Up there. That screen cap.
It’s supposed to be a bit of light fun, but I admit I kind of. Hm. Now I remember why I don’t read fiction any more.
September 13, 2016 — 7:09 pm
Comments: 10
Thou sank’st my longboat!
There’s a paper out by Mark Hall of Perth Museum exploring the 36 ancient Northern European burials that have included board games. Two of the game burials were in the Orkneys, which were under Norwegian rule until Tudor times. I tried (and failed) to find the source paper online, not least because the article about it in the Scotsman was behaving oddly in my browser. Fair warning.
Two reasons, they speculate (I remind myself that any discussion of the reasons our pre-literate ancestors did things is always speculation). First, there was such a thing as gamer cred. Prowess at strategy games was regarded as a warrior skill.
Secondly, they wanted to keep the ghost entertained so he wouldn’t come back and mess with the living.
Eh. Who knows? The delightful chess pieces in the picture are real, by the way. They’re called the Lewis chessmen because they were found on a beach in Lewis, Scotland in 1831. Late 12th, early 13th C., carved from walrus ivory. There were 93 pieces found. It’s well worth following the link to read more and see them up close.
And with that, I’m off to play the vidya!
July 27, 2016 — 7:21 pm
Comments: 14
Sad weasel
I don’t mean to name-drop, but our new Home Secretary is the MP for nearby Hastings and Rye and, somewhere out there, there’s a picture of me standing next to her.
She’s a squishy, warmenist cow. *spit*
To celebrate my awesome new video card, I bought the last expansion to the Witcher 3, Blood and Wine. I haven’t played that game since February. Is it sad that I was really pleased and happy to see Geralt again?
Yes, that is definitely sad.
July 14, 2016 — 9:30 pm
Comments: 10
What a time to be alive!
Calooh! Callay! Just Cause 3 was released today!
The (wafer thin) plot to the Just Cause games goes like this: you’re CIA agent Rico Rodriguez. You are dropped on a tropical island ruled by a tinpot dictator. You will best serve the cause of Great Justice by fucking up as much shit as humanly possible. You have a powerful wrist-mounted grappling device (like unto Spidey’s web spinners), a flying suit, a parachute and the ability to hijack any vehicle on the island, including jets and helicopters.
The only change from game to game: it gets bigger and prettier. This one is on an island chain of over a thousand square kilometers, with downright cinematic go-booms, flying sequences and — I shit you not — car chases through fields of sunflowers and lavender. Watch the trailer!
You know, you guys, computer games are the one area of popular culture where our team has prevailed. Big time. Rough justice, x-treme individualism, and lots and lots of lovely boom sticks and explosions. No kid who grows up playing this stuff will ever vote for gun control.
December 1, 2015 — 9:49 pm
Comments: 3
Everybody do the Glitch!
What’s a big game without a big glitch? I’m coming to the end of Witcher 3, sadly. Here we see Geralt of Rivia levitating three feet in the air with his legs tucked under him. He has just fought off a whole company of witch hunters, all of whom were also levitating three feet in the air with their legs tucked under them. nee-walked their way through the whole damn thing. It was like playing Marco Polo without the water.
Dude in the back there is dead and just hanging around in midair for no reason.
Known bug. It got better.
My favorite is still the Skyrim bug that made all the chickens in Whiterun repeatedly leap fifty feet in the air and then drift earthwards slowly. I finally worked out that the variable for #chickenheight somehow got crossed with the variable for the height of a stone loosed from a catapult just off screen.
And no, I’m not playing Fallout 4 like all the cool kids. My machine is under spec’ed.
November 25, 2015 — 10:14 pm
Comments: 15
oh, HELL no!
This just hit my inbucket. Ten bucks gets you early access on Steam.
I could be wrong. This could be super clever and funny. But if that adorable chibi is supposed to be Hillary! Clinton, I’m thinking…not.
November 17, 2015 — 10:36 pm
Comments: 11
I have a hilarious problem
I have a problem with video games, my imaginary friends: my house is cooler than Skyrim. Check out this photo. Yeah, there’s a roaring fire just behind the monitor. No, I haven’t ‘shopped the bits together.
I’m playing Witcher at the moment, but the principle is the same. Sword ‘n’ sorcery games are stuck somewhere between Medieval and Tudor Europe (well, the costumes in the Witcher look more 17th C, but it’s all of a piece). Big oak beams, brick inglenooks, wattle-and-daub walls. Yup, that’s our place.
I exist in a bubble of what I think of as ‘England porn.’ I work for an historical society, so my days are filled with even older buildings and old documents. My nights in Badger House involve getting sozzled in front of a roaring fire watching history programs on TV. Weekends, we go to village fetes, bonfires and stately homes.
Oh, it’s lovely. Don’t get me wrong. But I often have the feeling something horrible is sneaking up on me while I indulge.
November 2, 2015 — 10:07 pm
Comments: 14
Well, shoot; I might have to buy this one
I’m kind of Iffy on the Assassin’s Creed series of games. That’s the one where you crawl all over historic cities wearing a cool cape and hood and stab people to death. It’s not that I object to stabbing people, I just found the gameplay and vestigial plots somewhat boring after a while.
On the other hand — the cities! The cities are incredibly cool and, I presume, reasonably accurate. I absolutely loved parkour’ing my way around Jerusalem and Acre. Having to stab someone to death occasionally was a small price to pay. I forgot how far into the series I got before I finally lost interest.
Also, my machine is now under-spec’ed. To keep up with the current generation of games, I’m going to have to upgrade my graphics card, at the least. And maybe the whole shootin’ match.
So I wasn’t planning on buying the latest iteration, Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, even though it’s set in Victorian London and I lumme some Victorian London. And then I read an article titled Just how British is Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate? and changed my mind. I think it was this bit:
It might seem like an inconsequential addition at first, because it’s difficult to fully comprehend the Britishness of a fruit stall without a man bellowing things about discount pears. Stall-dwelling Fruit & Veg Men are a mystery. They come from London’s hidden underplaces, and speak in a lost language known as “Cabbage Speech”, or “Appletongue.” No British person can explain the compulsion to buy plastic bags full of greengages from shouting men in hats, but it’s as relevant to our cultural heritage as chicken tikka, disappointment, and avoiding smalltalk. You might not know it, Assassin’s Creed tomato artist, but your work is a crucial piece of set dressing.
This might not be London, but we by-God have a fruit stand in the market that could have slouched straight out of Dickens’ metropolis. I have never in my life been so drawn to buying a giant bowl of grapefruit for £1. That’s my long-term retirement plan — turning up at the market once a week, buying a big-ass load of vegetables and living on soup.
I just have to work out how to get Uncle B to eat vegetable soup.
October 27, 2015 — 9:42 pm
Comments: 11
Good for a laugh
The next Assassin’s Creed game is set in Victorian London, I guess, because they sent me this promotion tonight: The Nineteenth Century Search Engine.
Fun animation. Good for minutes of wholesome fun! The first search term I tried was “coal.”
Have a good weekend, everyone! We’re overdue for a weekend at home, not looking at any fine antiques but each other.
October 2, 2015 — 10:18 pm
Comments: 5