How I Spent My Time

     It looks like I’ve been a bad boy this month.  I’ve hardly done any blogging at all.  I’ve done even less writing.  So, you’re probably wondering, “What’s he been up to, anyway?”  At least, I hope that’s what you’ve been wondering.  So, let’s go down and see what I’ve been doing.

     First, if you’ve ever read my blog before you know that I’m stuck in some melancholy loop that revolves around the 1980’s and the computers of yesteryear.  Well, I dusted off the old Atari 8-bit emulator and thought I could finish some games that I never finished before.  Then I remembered just how many games that I started that I never did finish.  And that’s a lot of them.

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Dunzhin – By Screenplay

     I am one of the few people I know that bought Dunzhin.  All right, I’m the only person I know that bought it.  I loved role playing games and the idea of running around a dark dungeon with a sword.  The graphics are, um, functional.  Even for the Atari 8-bit, they were a bit lacking.  But that’s not the important part when it comes to RPG’s.

     The premise of Dunzhin is that you’re sent into the Dunzhin to find an object and then bring it back.  An awful lot like the games Nethack, Moria, Rogue, and a few dozen others.  While searching different rooms for your quest object, which I must add was a randomly chosen thing with ridiculous names like “The Screaming Hand of Obyxx,” you could run into a variety of trouble.  Pits could open beneath your feet, you could fall flat on your face tripping on a trip wire, noxious gas could fill the room, or you could be attacked by enemies.

     Ten minutes after starting Dunzhin I remembered why I never finished it.  It’s insanely hard.  Your character is very weak when you start and, unlike many games, you have different body parts that can be attacked and each part has its own health.  While, overall, you may have 35 hit points, your right arm may only have two.  So, if you were unlucky enough to get scratched on your right arm, well, then it’s game over.  And that happens a lot.  If that weren’t bad enough you frequently get teleported all over the place.  Some disembodied women decides she doesn’t like you and bam!, you’re off somewhere else.  Usually deeper in the

dungeon where you don’t stand a chance of surviving.  And just when you think you’re getting a handle on all of it, bopping dwarves on the head, lopping off zombie arms, and whatever, you wade into battle and have your sword bust on you.  And that happens a lot, too.

     Don’t get me wrong, though.  Dunzhin really is a good game.  In battle you can target different body parts of the enemy, and some enemies have some nasty weak spots.  For instance, a zombie won’t have any armor on his right arm, so if you start fighting one that’s where you want to aim.  But if it wasn’t for the “Save State” feature of Atari800win Plus or Atari800 I think I would have given up a long time ago.  Again.

     Perfect example.  I just started it up so I could get a screen shot.  I walked about ten steps before being attacked by four zombies.  My first attack missed.  A zombie’s first attack hit my neck.  Whoops!  Game over.  Total time spent in game before dying?  One minute.

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Kaiv – By Screenplay

     Dunzhin was the first game in the “Warrior of RAS” series.  Kaiv was the second.  Since I actually did like Dunzhin, despite keeling over dead the moment I walked into it, I picked up Kaiv as well. 

     Kaiv is similar to Dunzhin in that the game play is nearly identical.  Some differences are that instead of walking through a dark dungeon, you’re walking through a dark cave.  The graphics for the walls are different, too.

     But it does have some interesting points that make it an evolution over Dunzhin.  For one, you can buy more than one sword.  So, when your sword breaks you can switch to a back up.  You also have to buy your own armor.  And, unlike Dunzhin, you need to buy torches.  You can probably guess that your torches have a tendency to be blown out frequently.

     There were two other games in the “Warrior of RAS” series: Wylde and Ziggurat.  I’ve never seen them for sale, though, or else I would have bought them also. 

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     There are a couple of other games, but I’ll get to them later because they’re much bigger and grander.

     Joost.com has a bunch of episodes of the television show, “Have Gun – Will Travel” starring Richard Boone.  I’ve been watching a lot of these and, despite the fact that I don’t care for Westerns all that much, I have to say that I consider this one of the best shows ever written.  The character of Paladin is just amazing: part scoundrel, part nobleman, part Robin Hood.  Some people may be surprised to know that Gene Roddenberry (Star Trek) was one of the writers for this show.

     The stories aren’t just “gun slinger kills guy” stories, either.  There’s a lot of subtlety in how he goes about his business.  They’re old, from the 1950’s, but I highly recommend them.

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     So, there you go.  A minor update into what I’ve been doing lately.

 

Booger & The Dr Pepper

     I got my bottle of Dr Pepper this morning.  Checking the cap, I saw that it was a winner so I hurriedly plugged the code into the website.  I wondered if I were going to win another screen saver?  Maybe the same wallpaper I’ve already won?  Would it be a ringtone I couldn’t use?

     No!  None of those things.  I won a Dr Pepper keychain!  Now I have to wait ten to twelve weeks to get the thing.  Sheesh!  I want it now!

 

    For anyone interested, my Pet Society pet, Booger, has hit upon some sad financial times.  He sure could use your help, if you were so inclined.  Could you let this poor dog bear animal live on the street with nothing more than a tin can, a tire, and a rubber ducky?

     It looks like Playfish has a new game out now, too, called GeoChallenge.  I’ll have to take an in-depth look at that one, too, pretty soon.

Facebook Games Review III: Pathwords

     Pathwords is one of those games that’s great if you have a good vocabulary and a pretty good eye.  It also helps if you’re playing with friends that don’t have a good vocabulary or good eyes.

     When Pathwords starts up you’re greeted by a hexagonal grid that’s covered in letters.  The object is to start on a letter by clicking on it and then dragging your mouse over the other letters until you form a word.  The letters you have selected are also reflected on the bottom of the screen and are colored red, if you don’t have a valid word, or green if you do.  When you release the mouse then the tiles you used are destroyed and new blocks fall to take their places.  It’s a timed game, too, so you have five minutes to find as many words as possible. 

     Overall it’s a pretty good game.  There’s nothing spectacular about it.  Really, it’s quite utilitarian.  I

can’t recommend playing it on a laptop with a touchpad, though.  Sometimes the cursor can go all over the place and you end up trying to spell a word just to get gobbeldygook out of it.

     Like most Facebook games, Pathwords keeps track of your score and taunts your other playing friends with how great you are. 

     There is some strategy that comes into play.  If you see a big word coming up but you can’t quite get to it yet then you will need to settle on lesser words to let the other letters fall into place until you can get your big word complete.

     So, grab your dictionary and try it out for some interesting times.

Facebook Games Review II: Pet Society

     Pet Society is another SIMS kind of game.  Or maybe more like Little Computer People that’s more interactive.  It’s a side-view game where you make a “pet” and name it then let it loose in a house.

     And this is where a grown man should stop if he wasn’t totally

crazy.  I, of course, pressed on. 

     If Pet Society has a goal, that goal is to amass trophies.  You get trophies for visiting friends, playing ball, buying clothes and other things.  The secondary goal is to amass money so you can get the trophies for buying things.  Along the way I suppose you can also buy furniture and flooring and stuff to personalize your house.

     Essentially, Barbie with quasi-animals.

     Your pet isn’t just stuck in his house, though.  He can wander

around town.  Passing through trees can net you an occasional coin.  There are stores to visit, like a grocery store and furniture store.  There are also empty lots where, if you’ve got friends and invite them to play, a construction marker marks there spots.  If they actually join then the spot turns into another house.

     Walking into a friends house gives you a menu where you can engage in activities with your friend’s pet.  Dance, tell a joke, or whatever and you can earn points to level up (giving you money and different goodies) and money. 

     Also in town are two areas that aren’t active yet.  One is a coffee shop which, I guess, will be a place where you can interact with other players.  The other is a stadium.  I’m hoping this is where pets can battle to the death for fun and prizes.

     There are a couple of things I don’t like about Pet Society.  One

is that it’s harder than Hell to make money unless you have a lot of friends or cheat somehow.  The easiest way to get serious coinage is to buy it with your PayPal account.  Even in Yoville, you can “work” for $200 or so every six hours. 

     The other thing kind of disturbs me.  If you hold down the mouse button and rub the cursor over your pet, they make some weird purring noises.  If you keep rubbing then a coin pops out of their head.  Ummm…  Kind of phallic, you know?