Stargrace

Throwback Monday – Sims Medieval

Another post from NomadicGamers – 2011!

I’ve been spending some of my free game time playing The Sims Medieval since it released and I have to say, I am simply in love with the game. I’ve always been a huge fan of the Sims franchise in general, and this game is no different. Well, that’s not completely true, this game has aspects that are in fact, very different. One thing that the game does NOT do well is explain how the controls work. Unless you’re familiar with the regular Sims UI (I’m talking the house one in specific) you may feel a bit lost on some aspects. For example, in the first part of the tutorial you’re expected to go upstairs and use a mirror. The tutorial doesn’t tell you how to get upstairs – but the manual does (for those of you who purchased the physical copy of the game). If you remember the house icon in the basic Sims game, you’ll also see there’s a house icon above and below the direction keys on the UI. The upper one leads you upstairs, the lower downstairs. The mirror is in the bedroom upstairs (at least in my default castle). The camera view is a bit difficult to navigate when it comes to interacting with buildings because you can’t rotate the view to any more then a front “barbie house” view as I call it. You can still decorate your castle in any manor you like, and your characters in the Kingdom are unique to your creations which I adore.

The one thing that’s completely different in Sims Medieval that wasn’t in the other sims games quite so much (Sims 3 has it although done differently) is the quest system. You can decide who will do the quest and that will decide which path you take to complete it. You need to have certain NPC unlocked for a few quests, but the amount of choice each player has is just astounding. I can choose you use a bard or my monarch to complete a quest, and then they each have their own decisions and paths to make about each step of that quest. It’s humourous and the graphics are simply astounding.

If you’re not a fan of the Sims I don’t know how much appeal this game will have, as it still follows the basic Sims rules at its core – but personally, I just can’t get enough of it. Anyone else playing? Enjoying it? Let me know in comments!

RimWorld Mods

I love the steam workshop that allows people to create and post their game mods up for others to use. I think it really adds to the community, and of course it adds to the playability of the games that these mods are created for. RimWorld has a few “quirks” that I’m not very fond of – but no worries, there’s a mod for that.

The first one I use increases stack sizes. I believe the default stack size is 75 – and when you’ve progressed in the game that becomes a huge annoyance as you collect more and more items and have to keep expanding your stockpiles. I suggest this mod as a must.

You’ll notice that most of my mods don’t make the game ‘easier’ but only enhance the game, add content to it, or are simple quality of life items. I prefer it that way, but you can hunt down mods for pretty much anything.

The other mods I’m using include:

Realistic Rooms – this makes it so that I don’t need gigantic rooms in order for my RimWorld colonists to be happy. They’re much more realistic sizes.

FishIndustry – adds fishing to the game. You can create a dock and basically ‘hunt’ from it.

RimFridge – just like it says, it adds fridges to the game. Great when you want to keep food in the same room as a prisoner (just one example).

More Furniture – adds (you guessed it) more furniture.

[T] More Floors – adds more floor options (a LOT more).

Tilled Soil – gives me better growing options if I till the soil first.

Vegetable Garden – A huge mod that adds new meals to cook, new ways to cook them, and new research branches to unlock even more options.

Fences and Floors – pretty self explanatory.

Have a favourite RimWorld mod that you use? Be sure to let me know in comments and I’ll check it out! I’m only just getting started with mods, so I’ve just been going by those most popular and ones that interest me. There are thousands out there that can change so much of the gameplay that I just haven’t really known where I should start!

I started up a new game last night (on rough difficulty, classic gameplay) and so far it’s going very well. I’ve had a few pirate invasions, I had a chunk of spacecraft fall from the sky that I had to destroy (and two scythers popped out of it, scary!), I’ve had animals go mad, I’ve had a muffalo rampage happen (I had to keep my colonists indoors for that one), and various other smaller difficulties have all been faced and overcome. Two of my colonists are now in love, no one has died (yet), and we’ve expanded from the original three to five. In other words, things have been going relatively well, and any moment now I expect things to go batshit crazy and fall apart. I’ve just entered into my first winter. We’re well stocked with food and medical supplies – we’ll see what we come up against, and how well prepared we were in the end.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Keeping up With Gaming

In EverQuest 2 things have come to a bit of a standstill. I don’t have the time to LFG to do dungeons, and I’m pretty bored of running the same advanced solo dungeons every day. I log in to craft, get my loyalty tokens, and putter around, but I haven’t been keeping up with my epic 2.0 or progression in any real meaningful way. Since I have so many characters just doing the little bit of daily stuff I do is enough to keep me ‘busy’ but I’m also wondering if it wasn’t a mistake to get a year long subscription. Of course I had intended to play EverQuest with that, not EQ2, so maybe when I have a bit more time I’ll go back to my original plan.

In WoW things are moving along (even if it is at a snail’s pace). I’m able to queue for a few raids a week, I do some world quests, my characters move up the chain of progression. I’m really excited about the new pet battle dungeon coming to the game soon(tm) and I can’t wait to give it a try. I wish pet battles could be done independently of logging into the game (ie: mobile) but things are not so bad. My subscription for WoW lasts until July, so I have a few more months of that left and I’ll probably renew. It’s a good game even with my limited time.

EVE Online. I subscribed with a PLEX and then played once or twice. Truth of the matter is as much as I adore this game (and I do) I really want to play it with TWO accounts and that’s just not viable for me at this time. I probably won’t renew until I can afford to activate both my accounts, so maybe once my EQ2 subscription runs out. Don’t get me wrong, I love the game, I love playing, but I really like both accounts active so I can make full use of things.

Wurm Online / Unlimited. I currently have two active accounts in Wurm Online, Stargrace, and Blesse (a Vynora priest). I’ve got three active deeds (two on Xanadu and one on Independence) and while I haven’t been doing much to them aside from keeping up with the fields and animals, I still enjoy logging in every day. Wurm is one of those games that just really relaxes me. Plus I can leave it up and running while I putter around with my little one in real life. I also logged into Wurm Unlimited to check on my deed there. One had fallen (I re-deeded the place, my buildings and walls were all still standing) over on Sklotopolis, and over on Age of Urath – well, that server is apparently done now. It had a lock symbol by it with no users online. Should have stuck with my first choice! I also noticed a “new” server with the highest population these days, Zaneth. I’m incredibly cautious about new servers because it seems like there’s a huge overturn and you never know if the server will actually stick around but as long as I don’t go off and donate right away (like I have in the past) then I suppose there’s no real harm in checking things out.

In the meantime life is pretty busy. I get maybe an hour of gaming a day, which isn’t anything to sneeze at, and by rotating what I play I keep from getting bored. Of course it does seem that as soon as I settle in to do a dungeon or improve some weapons my little guy is waking up and begging for my attention, but hey that’s the joys of parenthood. He’s 4.5 months old right now, and while things haven’t exactly gotten easier yet, they’re constantly changing.

I hope everyone else has been having a great time despite the turmoil that seems to be enclosing around the world. Are you checking out Conan Exiles? What about ESO’s big announcement today? Did you give For Honor a try? Head to PAX South? Let me know in comments, and as always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Throwback Monday?

I was looking up a bunch of my old posts, and came across this single one for Perpetuum that I wrote back in 2010 – a game I briefly played and then never thought of again for xyz reason. Thought I’d share it, because why not.

Thanks to Scopique I had my interest piqued about Perpetuum a few weeks ago, but I didn’t give it very much more thought until the tail end of their open beta. I decided with early access happening just two days away I’d avoid playing the beta at all. One of the main factors for my decision was the price tag, you really can’t go wrong with 37 days of game play for $10 – no box or game to purchase, just the monthly fee.

The game itself is sci-fi, mech to be more specific. You may have heard it’s like EVE but on a planet, which is very true. The UI is composed of a lot of windows and screens and various boxes that can all be re-sized and moved around to your liking. There are various paths you can chose to go down (much like EVE) like PvP, PvE, and invention / production. I’ve only spent a few hours in game so far, doing tutorials, but it’s been fun.

The learning curve is quite steep so I have been taking my time with the tutorial. It took me three attempts to finally ‘get’ EVE after all, and I expect this will be much the same, especially since the genre is not one I’m typically comfortable in.

I’ve decided to go along a crafting rout (for lack of better term) for my first attempt. I’ve done the tutorials for mining which requires me to head out with my little Arkhe (the beginner uh.. mech? I was given) and extract metals from the ground. What I do with those metals after I’ve extracted them I don’t have the faintest idea. I’m sure it will come with time. The game is pretty, and unique to me. I like that you earn your EP (basically training points) while off line, and put those towards skills. There is no queue for skills, and while the UI may seem very EVE-esc, the similarities stop.

Avatar Creations also did a great job with their promotions, as yesterday numerous bloggers were given free early access codes to use and give out. Since I had already purchased access I gave away the codes on twitter and other Nomadic Gamer writers. Creating a buzz is never a bad thing.

Ok so I haven’t delved into enough of the game to come to a good conclusion on it, but I AM having fun exploring something new, and I’m looking forward to posting future screen shots and articles on my progress here. For now, it’s back to the tutorial about terminals.

Happy gaming!

Guilty Pleasure Games

We all have them. Those games we like to play, but we don’t really advertise that we play for whatever reason. So what are your guilty pleasure games?

Mine are pretty easy, you can see them on my steam profile, I’ll log in an hour here and there in between life when it allows me a break from nursing / various other baby happenings.

Faerie Solitaire – a really simple cute card game where you can collect animals and evolve them. There’s really nothing to this game, but it’s adorable, fun, and easy to play in spurts. Definitely one of my guilty pleasures.

Tripple Town – another really easy puzzle game that doesn’t require too much brain power to play it. I can easily step away if I need, and it’s cute. After all, who doesn’t like ninja teddy bears?!

Anything Otome – A few friends of mine have started playing Otome games and they’ve gotten a bigger audience over the years which is fantastic to see. I’m a sucker for a good story, and if the artwork and the voice overs are good then it’s all the better for me. Some of my favourites include Seduce Me, Always Remember Me, Date Warp, and Long Live the Queen. Sure, they’re not for everyone, but hey it wouldn’t be a guilty pleasure if it was!

So how about the rest of you out there. What games do you find yourself playing that you never imagined you’d be drawn to? Is maybe World of Warcraft that guilty little pleasure that you don’t want to admit to your friends that you find appealing (there’s nothing wrong with that, by the way, I love playing WoW, and I also play numerous other games. We’re beyond the point of only being allowed to like one single game at a time)? Let me know in comments, and as always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!