Crysis Management

I somehow managed to get Crysis: Warhead running on my PC (after years of it sitting on my to-play list) and was quite impressed with the fluid, albeit railroaded, gameplay. To be honest though, I found it on the easy side, despite playing on the hardest mode. I guess all that practice with the L4D2 zombies improved me as I don't recall the original game being so easy. That said the final boss still took me a few tries to beat! The rest of my games have been taking a backburn though as they are venturing into the realms of "my compy can't handle them" anymore. It's ok, hopefully sometime this week I'll it will be getting an upgrade.

Lords of Waterdeep
 
Hasn't stopped me from playing my other games though - board games! Primarily been playing "Lords of Waterdeep", a really clever and competitive game in a D&D with a focus of management and manipulation. So far I've fared better (won) in bigger groups but when it's one on one I'm usually on the losing end. The premise of trying to gain the most influence on the city through completing quests is pretty simple and very elegantly done. The lack of dice rolling and an 8 turn limit also makes it go pretty quick (in comparison to Arkham Horror at least) but it's the strategy that may take time (as that's where all the fun is). Lastly it's very fast to get into and quite quick to setup which are two more positives, I just wish there was a cooperative mode where you had to fight the board but that would be kinda hard to do I think.

The other one I got to play recently was "Settlers of Catan" which I totally got thrashed in. Still fun, but I feel that you are often at the mercy of the dice. Comparatively speaking I like Waterdeep more because there's less luck involved and you never have turns where you do nothing (which was a common occurence in Catan if the dice gods didn't favour your villages). Note that you still need -some- luck in Waterdeep to be able to get the quests you need but other than that it's all on you.

Crysis before Christmas

Thanks to Juris who got me the Crysis pack awhile back, I just played through the original Crysis in 4 days. Very awesome game, but I'm slightly disappointed it was so easy even on the hardest mode. I find that's what usually happens in shooters that have auto regeneration / shields. Are the gamers of today so unskilled that they need such a feature? Sure it keeps the action going, but it also makes the game shorter.

I much prefer the SWAT mechanic where you get shot, tough luck. You're shot. No healing. If your arm is hit, your aim is dodgy while a bullet in your leg makes you much slower and there's NOTHING you can do about it. Really wish more shooters would do that. Anywho, Crysis: Warhead is up next. Maybe that will have something that will actually be challenging for me. Guess shooting all those zombies and playing the ultra real war shooters such as Dragon Rising increased my skill somewhat.

In other news, I checked out the google sites area to see how user friendly making a web page would be. Looks ok but I think I'm better off here. Less hassle for updates means more chance of me updating. :P Also worked more on CKT2KM, the experimental flash thing and could not get the -why-. It was heading towards a mundane archaic finish which would not have been satisfying for anyone involved so in my typical fashion I've abandoned that project. I am thinking of scouting out this GameMaker 8 program too, I have one of the much earlier versions of it and remember it was cool but not so sure yet till I see into it's core.

What to work on next? Probably Christmas shopping tops the list, followed by Mom's magic book. Ironically Mabi has recently been having lag issues and not been so fun to play so I may actually get some stuff done.

Lastly I watched Undisputed II tonight. Good action film! Not quite on par with the third installment but I'm definitely a Scott Adkins fan now. He even kicks butt in Assassination Games, though not as much since he has to go halves with Van Damme. :P And if action is not your thing, how about some piano music - or failing that... some crazy funny cats and dictators? :)

Project Status:
Christmas Shopping - 1% (big list :P)
Mom's magic book - 5%
DRM:FoTE - 5% (planned)
DRM:O - 2% (planning, switched from BP idea to be DRM related)
FR - 1% (backburner for now)
COTE (book) - 0%
CKT2KM - (canned)