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October 06 I have no idea what I'm doing up at this hour......or maybe I doI just decided to take a break and realized it was nearly 1:30 AM. And what, you may ask, was I doing that so diverted my attention? Reading some weighty and meaningful tome like "Being and Nothingness"? (Oh, that Sartre! What a card he was!) Lying awake plotting world domination? (Naw, I'll leave that to Ginger and her fellow dachshunds. "Wieners of the world unite!") Nooooooo, I have been totally submerged in the rather old-fashioned but quite engaging world of Myst III: The Exile. I know the trend in gaming has been toward the shoot-fast-and-rip-their-lungs-out sort of stuff, but I'm a rather quaint sort who refuses to get an X-Box or Nintendo etc, and I truly love puzzles. I like to sit at the old PC here, turn out the lights and immerse myself in some fantasy universe and explore and solve puzzles, which a whole lot of folks, particularly those of the male persusaion, probably find deadly dull. I mean, who would want to figure out how to get into a locked room using one's wits when one could simply take a very large weapon and vaporize the door? (HINT: a GUY!)
For those of you who are fans of the Myst series of games, you know exctly what I mean. They were quite a smash back in the early '90s when Myst first came out, and if I'm not mistaken, it is still the best-selling PC game of all time. But the thing is, you have to have patience. You have to be willing to back-track and find subtle clues lurking in sounds or seemingly insignificant pictures or other visual details. Heck, you even need to actually READ and take notes!
But I like that sort of stuff. I like exploring someone else's imagination and creativity and sharpening my wits. I have to keep one step ahead of those wiley Dachshunds after all. So if anyone else out there has the time or the patience, here's a list (in no particular order) of my favorite fantasy/adventure/puzzle solving games:
Myst: The grandaddy that started it all. The graphics may seem a bit out of date, but the scenes are still weirdly beautiful and the puzzles challenging without being impossible. Nice music, too.
Riven: This Myst sequel is a lot harder in that you can wander all over a huge area, and bits of puzzles are scattered all over, so there is a huge amount of back-tracking. But that being said, the puzzles are probably not quite as difficult as the original, just more spread out. Still, very lovely and other-worldly like the original.
Amber: Journeys Beyond: This is an obscure little gem that came out around 1996, and sadly, won't run on Windows XP, even if you do run across it. It does show its age with the more static sort of graphics and limited animation, but the story, involving a paranormal investigator in a haunted house and several ghosts that have to be "put to rest" is first rate. It's a creepy little game with suitably eerie music; very atmospheric. The puzzles range from easy to medium hard.
The Crystal Key: A good one for beginners, because none of the puzzles were very hard. A good enough story, though, but the graphics looked kind of rough in spots. One thing, at certain points if you have not accomplished certain tasks or aquired certain tools, it will be "game over", so save often. Still, a lot of fun.
The Riddle of the Sphinx: One of my personal favs, partly because I truely groove on that ancient Egyptian stuff, and partly because this game really sucks you in. Although (once again due to this also being at least 10 years old) the graphics are a tad rough, still I got such a kick from exploring the beauty of the hidden chambers and golden artifacts and lost temples. The music is evocative and the puzzles, although reasonably challenging, are pretty straightforward-- except for this one involving a combination lock in the begining of the game. That one was truely fiddly bastard. Anyway, you can "die" in this one if you make a wrong choice, so save your game fairly often.
CSI : Based on the TV show, you have to locate and analyze clues and interview suspects to solve a crime. This is a more recent game, so there is a lot more animation and interaction with said animated characters. The tricky part is finding ALL the clues, because even though you can miss a few and still solve the crime, you will get a lower rating at the end when Grissom evaluates you. Hard to get a perfect score. This one is especially good for CSI fans, because they used the actual actors for the animation and voices.
These are the games I've finished, I'm still working on Myst III and one called The Egyptian Prophecy (this is one is set during the reign of Rameses the Great...cool!). Anyway, I have to go to bed. I have Ginger's fiendishly clever plot to thwart, remember? June 21 Games I likeI think thsi summer heat has turned me into a lazy bum. I know I haven't been writing much, and I'm going through some serious blog guilt as a result. I think it's a phase. I seem to want to hang out by the pool when I'm not working and read my murder mysteries. When I'm working I sometimes don't even go online for days. I just come home, take Ginger to the dog park and crash. If I do play on the computer, it's usually to play Luxor or Jewel Quest or my latest passion: Feeding Frenzy 2. In that one you guide a little fish around and gobble up smaller fish and try to avoid the bigger ones who will eat you. You get your fish to grow bigger, avoid traps and pretty soon two hours have gone by. Amazing!
I tend to enjoy puzzle games that require some thinking and strategy. My reflexes are too slow for most action games where speed is the big thing, although I do fairly well with some old fashioned speed and strategy games like Tetris. I really dislike all the shoot-and kill type games. There seems to be something wrong with getting rewarded for body counts. Kinda gruesome, don't ya think??
If you want to really stretch your mind and have a fair amount of patience, you can't beat Myst and its sequals. I love those those wonderful surreal settings and neat-o plots, but sometimes it can get frustrating when you're stuck on a particular puzzle. Best thing to do is leave them alone for a few days, then go back and check your notes ( that is the real secret of these sorts of games: take notes. Many, many of them) and try again. Backtrack and see if you missed something. If all else fails, I call my sister for a hint. OK, maybe that's sort of cheating, but I see it more as a push in the right direction.
I remember when I was solving the Selenetic Age from the original Myst game. The whole key to that age was sounds. Loved it! There was a puzzle where you had to duplicate some notes played on a keyboard on a device that had sliding levers that slid the notes from low at the bottom to high at the top. It took me all of about 10 minutes. I don't have "perfect pitch" or anaything, but I have a good ear. The only difficult thing was getting the exact spot on the sliding scale. And you had to play the notes on the keyboard, then go across the room to the other device. Keeping the note in your mind was a bit tricky. My sister found it damn near impossible. She couldn't believe I had solved it so quickly. Now, the rest of Myst wasn't so easy. I think, all told, it took me about 3 or 4 weeks to finish. I had to let some things soak in for quite a while in some cases!
Here's another cool game: Riddle of the Sphinx by Dreamcatcher. I'm a sucker for that ancient Egyptian setting. I loved to turn off the lights and immerse myself in the beautifully exotic and fairly tricky game. One hint: towards the end of the game, there are some places where if you make a wrong choice it's game over, so saving your game at frequent points is a good idea.
Anyway, I'm working on Riven now, the sequal to Myst. Yeah, I know, it's been around for a while. Actually I started it about a year or more ago and then dropped it when I got stuck at one point. I'm ready to give it a whirl again. So off I go to the land of Myst.......
Hope everyone is having a great summer. Blessed be one and all.
August 11 Poor timing on my partOOPS! Connie, I thought you were kidding about the guy who died playing a computer game, but I have the link to a USA Today article : http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-08-10-gaming-death_x.htm and it is absolutely true. So my silly little post about my pet game obsession comes off in very poor taste and I do appologize. But the damn game really is a lot of fun, and it does suck you in and that's all I meant.
PS Geez, Lamont, I now have this mental picture of you as some sort of character from "revnge of the nerds'! You have completely busted my bubble. LOL! Blessed be one and all. August 10 Confessions of a "Luxor" addictHi, my name is Sharon and I'm addicted to "Luxor"......
My sister and I are in this goofy and utterly meaningless competion to win this silly computer game called Luxor. For the benefit those who have not yet descended to the depths of this addiction, let me describe it: you use your mouse to click and shoot little colored balls at a moving path with other little colored balls on it. The idea is to create groups of 3 or more to eliminate them before they reach the end of the path. And all this has an ancient Egyptian theme with cute little hieroglyphic backgrounds and somewhat hoaky, but somehow necessary, music and sound effects. Thats it! Sounds simple, no? Well, I'm here to tell you, gentle readers, that it is a simple road to mindless oblivion. This game is worse than crack cocaine in it's power to control human behavior. Sit down and play and watch hours go poof into a black hole. After a while, you notice your hands aching, your fanny sore from sitting and your eyes sore and bugged out like poached eggs, but can you stop? Hell no! You're on level 9-7 ready to break through to the mysteries and challenges of level 11! And so it goes. I am fairly convinced that the programers who created this incidious lttle robber of sanity have embedded some kind of mind control software into the game as a sort of geek-boys' revenge. I can see them now: "Laugh at me, will you? Think you can mock my lack of social skills, my poor taste in wardrobe, and my occaisional lapses in personal hygene? HA! I will have my revenge! I will turn you all into mindless zombies, mesmerised by a compter screen until you are withered up and ready to be my slaves!" This, followed by insane cackling. OK, my imagination tends to run away with me. But really! I truely cannot figure out why this game is soooooo much fun. If you must check it out, remember: you have been warned! And with that, I'm off to conquer level 12..........Blessed be.
June 13 More wasted timeHere's my latest find for totally wasting hours at a time: Gamehouse.com. Goofy little action/puzzle games that are more addictive than crack cocaine. The cheap way is to play online, of course, but the temptation to download and own it is powerful. My current passion is "Luxor". I am stuck on one level titled "Khufu's Revenge" and if I don't conquer it soon, I may as well jump off a bridge. Ok, not REALLY, but it has turned into a bit of a compulsion. Lots of fun. And somehow many,many hours go poof into a black hole. I think the eeeeevil programers embed some weird mind control software into the games so that people play them until they are mindless drooling idiots wasted to less than 80 pounds alternately mumbling and cackling madly. I'm starting to mumble already, which is the first sign of impending mental doom. So if I don't write for a while, PLEASE! somebody come and yank me away from the computer, by force if necessary. June 07 RivenI srarted playing my first session of "Riven" (the adventutre/puzzle PC game sequel to Myst, and yes, I KNOW it's been out for 5 years or so, but hey, I'm slow) and I am very impressed. By comparison, Myst seemed very static and it just goes to show what a difference a couple years of technological advances can make. The landscape is rich and detailed, and full of the fantastical beauty the made Myst so compelling. Also, incredibly complex. In Myst, you were focused in one self-contained "age" at a time, which made exploring fairly easy. In Riven, you can wander freely through this vast complex of connected islands, with all sorts of multiple path choices. I spent about 3 hours just exploring, getting turned around, and backtracking. There are some really cool conveyances such as a overhead monorail, an underground mine car, and my personal favorite, the min-sub. That was my big acomplishment for the session, figuring out to activate and use the mini-sub. I also found the symbols for the numbers 1-10 and got a tentitive feel for the layout. Whew! Enough for now. Ok, one small complaint, which is partly on me: I didn't have a DVD drive when I bought Riven, so changing CDs in the middle of things can be somewhat distracting. Hey, that sounds like a wish-list idea (hint! hint!), the first three Myst games on DVD. Hmmmmm, what a concept! Ok, I'll update on my progress later. Blessed be till then |
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