Pixels Past

Been playing a little bit of a lot of games lately. Here’s the rundown, in brief:

Diablo II is smashy, smashy, killy, killy fun. My paladin, Ashenden, one-hits everything, except that cold-arrow firing boss in that one cave. It’s the kind of game that so far is ridiculously fun for twenty minute spurts. I suppose I’d get more sucked in, except the damned inventory is so very small and portalling back to town breaks up the action far more than I’d like. Then again, perhaps those trips back to town are good for my soul. Else I’m no better than the monsters, or something.

On the whole though, my other paladin, Ashenden, had a much more eventful weekend on his new server, running Karazhan for the first time. Yes, he’s level 74. Yes, his groupmates were 80s. Yes, he only gained ~4% of his next level. The thing about the raid encounters in World of Warcraft is that they’re the best, most elaborate scripted content in the game. Even stripped of the sense of achievement that comes from doing the content when it’s fresh, it’s worth seeing and experiencing. Also, some bosses are no respecters of level–I’m looking at you Netherspite (but not too hard, don’t take it the wrong way.)

When we weren’t beating on bosses (and running away from infernals), the lovely girlfriend and I spent some time with the fab four. We started late at night on guitar and bass, but after some beauty rest, it was time to break out the mic. Beatles: Rock Band is really a triumph of presentation. The between-set cinematics were great stylized slices of the Beatles’ history and added to the overall wonder that a single band could justify an entire game and such lavish presentation. Every element of the game says “Beatles.” You might not think of the Beatles as having a unique visual style, but they had several, and the visuals that accompany songs from the band’s various periods express that almost distractingly well. The only complaint we had was that it ended, minus a few beloved songs that we can only assume were held back for DLC purposes. But for anyone interested in a Beatles primer, I can’t think of a better way to first experience them.

Speaking of old things made new, the lovely girlfriend got me the Metroid Prime Trilogy for my birthday. I haven’t played much of it, but as an ardent lover of the Wii controls for Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, I can say that the Wii control scheme has arrived as good as ever to the original games. I thought the original Gamecube control scheme was rather ingenious when I first played the games–a clever way around the problem of aiming on a console, and of setting the games apart as first person adventures rather than pure shooters–but the Wii control scheme only serves to highlight its deficiencies. Make sure your sensor bar is at a comfortable height so you can rest your arm on your knee when you play, and once you’ve played these versions, you’ll never want to go back. I can’t wait to try Echoes, the only game of the three I never finished. I’m hoping that the breezier control scheme will ease the frustration of navigating the game’s oppressive dark world.

But my new, minor gaming addiction from the weekend is Little King’s Story. A kind-of RTS, the lovely girlfriend says it’s a bit like Pikmin, which I’ve never played, so I’ll just take her word for it. You run around as the titular king, collect townspeople of various jobs to do your bidding, collect treasure, commission buildings, gather lost art, and generally aim for WORLD DOMINATION. Except that your advisers are so hilariously inept, they keep underestimating the size of the world. I’d object to the fact that the first group you attack are little black monsters whose culture has a generic-tribal-African vibe, except I just got a cannon that shoots me around my kingdom for ease of travel and I, uh, still need a few million bol for that shopping center I want to build.