PROVE IT

Rather than let this evolve into a full-page rant, I'm going to keep it brief...

I was just glancing at the continuing stream of "reviews" for My Doom Upgrade WAD when I noticed this concise accusatory comment:

"This is just a ripoff of Mobius (id=16360). Great going, Herculine."

To that my only reply is this: show us some PROOF that I've stolen anything at all here. Otherwise, go fuck yourself.

DOOM DEPOT Returns

I haven't mentioned the "D"-word in an official post here for a while now, but after just seeing this bit of DoomWorld News that was posted a couple of days ago I just have to share...

I'm happy to announce that the Classic Doom Website DOOM DEPOT is at last accessible again. They've been having some sort of server issues for several months now (seems like just nigh a year) but appear to have finally resolved said issues.

This is significant (at least to me) because Doom Depot is the home of perhaps the earliest DOOM 64 TC and is also a great place to download full-color IWAD maps and a couple of great Doom music WADs. I've done my best here at my little blog to keep those music WADs available to the public in the absence of Doom Depot, but alas I've had issues with the file hosting sites due to the size of the files and the fact that they seem to randomly delete things I upload. At least now I once again have a reliable source to point to for people who are interested in these files.

Welcome back, Doom Depot!

MASS EFFECT

I'm not going to do a review-style blog entry on this one since the series of Mass Effect games is so popular that information and images regarding each can be found virtually everywhere on the internet. In other words, if you haven't heard something about these games it's likely you've actually been living in another galaxy.

This morning I started playing the first Mass Effect game because Mass Effect 3 (as you may have heard) is out now and I decided that it was probably as good a time as any to actually start playing the game(s). Since they've received almost nothing but good press and have been praised with gaming awards, I went into the first game with rather high hopes regarding how enjoyable it would be to play.

So far I'm not mass-ively impressed. I'm an action-oriented sort of gamer and I enjoyed playing through the game's first combat sequence, but now the sun is setting here in Ohio and I find that I've spent my entire day wandering around a huge space station talking to other characters and listening to them talk. That's at least eight hours of "gameplay" of just talking. RPG fans might rejoice, but thus far I've been kinda bored. Perhaps this explains why "Herculine Shepard" does not appear amused...

...but then, this gal doesn't look like she's easily amused...

So anyway, that's what I've been doing. Unless I get to kill something else pretty soon, I'm going to go back to playing Two Worlds or maybe even Doom...

Neverwinter Nights Nexus

To whom it may concern: Robin Scott has yet again expanded his game modding site empire by adding the Neverwinter Nights Nexus, a site which hosts mods for both NWN1 and NWN2. At the moment it's not quite as well-populated as the NWN Vault, but from what I've heard a great many members of the community were in favor of having such a branch of the Nexus so hopefully it will indeed be popular. As you may note from the first link in this post, I've already uploaded my NWN Female Portrait Pack as my show of support.

My thanks go to Dark0ne for continuing to support the prolific modding of games both old and new, and also to my friend Druuler for bringing the new addition to my attention because I had no clue that the site even existed.

Two Worlds (yes, again...)

I wasn't going to do yet another post about this game since interest in it is so limited (not a reference to my readership, but rather a reference to the fact that even the Two Worlds Forums don't show much activity where the first game is concerned), but there's still a thing or two I feel compelled to share.

Two Worlds has been compared to Oblivion by many more gamers other than myself, thus when I reached a particular location in the game I knew I needed to share at least one screenshot. Does this Two Worlds locale remind anyone of any other game in particular?

I was also reminded of a certain more popular RPG when I encountered my first invisible wall and was greeted by the message: "YOU CAN'T GO ANY FURTHER. TURN BACK."

But as you might guess from the stark appearance of the bit of rock I'm standing on in that screenshot, I encountered said invisible barrier while pushing my hero's dexterity to the limit against the physics of the game world by rabbit-hopping my way up the side of a steep mountain that I apparently wasn't meant to reach the top of to begin with.

This discovery reminded me yet again of my disappointment that the modding craze that other games have enjoyed never really took off for Two Worlds. There are plenty of only partially-developed areas around the borders of the map that would be perfect locations for cities, castles, enemy camps to invade et cetera, and it's really a bit of a shame that the potential of those areas will likely never be utilized.

The world is big enough that, even in the middle of the map, there are still plenty of areas with enough space to accommodate the entrances to underground dungeons or even above-ground enemy enclaves.

I've been playing for nearly 40 hours now (not consecutively, of course) and have only explored a fraction of the accessible game world.

The darker sections of the map are the unexplored areas while the brighter bits indicate where I've traveled thus far.

Here I "zoomed in" on the map with the mouse wheel to get a closer shot of one of the cities to give a reference point regarding the overall size of the map...

I've passed the level 50 benchmark (there's no level cap, I'm told) and I'm still encountering areas filled with enemies that can "one-shot" me. Obviously there's still plenty of gaming to do here, just in case anyone was wondering and again comparing the game to that certain other RPG. I'm a particularly stubborn gamer, though, and I press on into these areas and find as many cheesy ways as possible to deal with the tough enemies. My favorite thus far is planting myself next to a healing shrine or magic source and juggling the enemies with spells that briefly stun them while doing damage.

So that's what I've been doing lately. So far this is the longest in quite some time that I've played a single vanilla game without getting bored and switching to another game for a while before returning to it (classic Doom notwithstanding). I guess Two Worlds is simply satisfying my love for basic hack-and-slash dungeon crawls (as it has plenty of those).

Can my readers look forward to yet another post about Two Worlds? Ah, only time will tell...