1st Edition Risk

Today, at the second hand store I work at, we got in a 1st edition of the board game Risk. I nabbed that sucker right off the shelf. $10! Jealous much?

Also, anyone want to play Risk?

Hoorah for the New Season of Mad Men!

Got to catch up the two episodes that are out of this season's Mad Men last night. If you haven't watched this show yet, put it on your Netflix or however you get your televised fix. Tell me you got through an episode without once longing for a cigarette, and I will call your bluff, sir/madam.

Other than that, still riding the unemployment train. I'm really bummed out, because I thought I had a chance with Massively.com. They said they would contact you by the end of the month if they wanted you, /sigh. So disappointed. The pet store job that interviewed me hasn't called me back either o.O

Joining up with FreeMMOGamer.com

I've decided to join the team of www.freemmogamer.com so I'm changing this site back to being a personal, meandering, rambling blog.

My own site was a good idea, but joining a site that has thousands of readers is a better one ;)

Monato Esprit: First Impressions

Reality Gap’s new free to play MMO just hit the (imaginary) internet shelves, and I took the chance to give it the good old try. The graphics, as you can see, are in a cute chibi-esque style that I found rather pleasant. Character customization isn’t vast (only one race), but the charm of it is that can pick your horoscope and season, each which gives you different passive bonuses.

From there you go to a newbie island, which you can opt out of if you like. After you learn all the basics, you get to pick a class. There’s not a lot to begin with:

Hwarang—melee offensive
Templar—melee defensive
Mage—ranged offensive
Cleric – healer

I was rather disappointed, because I wanted to be the Sheriff class I read there was, but you must not be able to access that or the Harlequin class until later on. So I went with mage. To be honest, for the amount of time I played, I didn’t find mage to be very fun. I basically cast a nine minute buff and then spammed with magic missile every time it came off cool down. Mayhaps it got more interesting later on…

Despite my un-fascination for mage combat, ME did have something I haven’t seen in an MMO before. You don’t gain back health and mana over time. There are giant crystals (reminiscent of Final Fantasy) placed around the world that you have to go up to in order to heal. I rather liked it, because it altered my gameplay strategy from the norm. It also got rid of the downtime I always experienced as a mage in World of Warcraft.

Leveling up was really simple. Every level you get a skill point which you then can buy a higher rank of a skill (like magic missile). From what I could see there wasn’t even a talent tree, per se, you just unlocked new skills at different levels.

Crafting, referred to as Alchemy, also had a simple set up. You could get materials from monsters and from “decomposing” items (like gear you didn’t want). There didn’t seem to be any restrictions on the amount of crafts you could take up, you just needed to get the recipe, usually via quest.

The non-free part of the game is in the metaTIX points you can purchase. Certain quests could only be undertaken by spending metaTIX points. Rather weird in my opinion. Spend real money to do an in-game boring collection quest in order to get the item? No thankee.

My last note is on the dungeons. Certain characters give you the option to enter a dungeon (some of them you have to spend metaTIX points to enter). From there it’s a maze with rooms of different monsters (and hopefully crystals) until you find the boss. I tried doing a dungeon and got my cute little chibi butt kicked by the boss, so I assume I was supposed to go in a party, or come back at a higher level, or not be a squishy little mage with only one damage spell that has a cool down, take your pick of the preceding.

My final thoughts are that the game is very newbie-friendly and has a pretty simple set-up. Thus it would be ideal for a younger player, or a casual player that doesn’t like the complexity of large scale MMOs. I think my favorite part of the game was the profile pictures that come up when you’re chatting with someone, JRPG style. Sadly, that wasn’t enough to keep me playing.

Battlefield Heroes

So, Battlefield Heroes is now live to public! It's the standard free, pay-for-perks set-up. What do we care about? How much we can get for free, of course! Just by playing you get VP points to go to the store and spend on weapons and widgits (bandages, etc.) that last for a few or more days, depending on how much you spend. Battlefield Points, the ones you have to buy, get you more of the same kinds (and better kinds) of things, as well as the option to customize the look of your character.

The actual character creation doesn't give you a whole lot of options: skin tone, hair color, hair type, and facial hair. This leads to everyone looking the same (unless you want to pay), but this isn't the kind of game where that's a concern.

There are three classes, gunner (the tank), commando (stealth and sniping), and soldier (the mix) in a capture the flag scenario (Arathi Basin, anyone?). It's fun and the graphics are pleasing, check it out!

Here are some tips:
-Create an account before you try to start up the game.
-Create a hero before you try to start up the game (you can only do this on the webpage outside the game).
-If you're having trouble loading the create a hero screen, update to latest version of Flash

New Direction for the Blog

Since its inception, my blog has been directionless and meandering, whatever was in my head when I had the desire to post. That worked well for me when I was still in school, but now that I can turn my attention to my projects, I wanted to give my blog some kind of a meaning.

Insulin Funk takes all my editorials and news, and I didn't want to have this blog just for linking to my articles. Thus, free games! The perfect choice for a poor me and a poor economy!

Player's Log: Gun

Being jobless, my gaming has been confined to older games that I've meant to play or finish and games that I can borrow or find cheap at used games stores. I picked up Gun for PS2, remembering a recommendation from a friend several years ago. "It's a little bit like Fable, only a shooter and western." I think the description holds up pretty well. It doesn't offer all the options of Fable, but so far it's definitely worth the $4.99 I paid for it.

According to the save game data, I'm about a quarter of the way through the game. I have to say that so far, I really long for the character and game experience customization I'm used to in games of this sort. Sometimes the missions seem innovative and sometimes they seem rinse, repeat. And I hate mounted combat. Now to be fair, my hatred likely stems from my lack of skill at it, but as the other aspects of the game aren't causing me trouble, I feel safe in saying that it's just to hard to control.

Beyond these grievances, the game is entirely enjoyable. A lot of the missions are just pure fun: saving hookers, protecting stage coaches, keeping bars from being burned down, killing bandits, show downs, all the western necessities are there!

I'd definitely recommend it as a fun game to play in your waiting time, or ought I say recover time?, between the big A-listers.