Indie game: Alter Ego

When perusing various sites on the web, I came across this fun game called Alter Ego which I find to be, pardon my expression, FRIGGIN' AWESOME!

Now I don't know if it is strictly Indie (nor do I know the exact concept of indie other than it being from an independent developer, hence the name) but I still enjoy it very much. It was apparently a dos game of sorts but has now become entirely browser based with no flashy animations.

The game itself is hard to explain but it plays out like The sims meet a text based adventure. You start as an infant and then play through several situations where you choose the best option. Now not all of them are right and not all of them are entirely bad, instead you have to rely on gut instinct and/or mischievously behaviour (an example would be where you get to uppercut a daycare lady). All options count towards attributes which in turn also affects the outcomes of the options you choose, (e.g. are you strong enough to beat a bully and so forth).

Alter Ego becomes progressively more complex but I won't reveal to much because such a game really has to be experienced personally (a cliché, I know, but it's true) and it even gives you a great opportunity for replay so that you can find out how it might have affected your life to follow the creepy man or take out the ugly girl for the prom.

Play the game at: http://www.playalterego.com/

I LOATHE PvP!

Recently, the all mighty Penny Arcade parodied an application for Iphone that lets people check the World of Warcraft Auction House. In this they showed an app, where a rogue could click on people characterized by dots and simply kill them instantly.

This brings me to todays topic: PVP, not the awesome web comic, no, but an aspect of online gaming that I find to be the worst addition to gaming and a waste of bandwith. Picture this: you are standing in a quiet meadow, killing bunnies to satisfy some greedy sloth in a village nearby when a gigantic cow comes trampling towards you with flaming swords and the look of human hatred in their eyes. You quickly die of course since this person was twice as high level than you and to make things worse, he makes rude gestures to your smoldering and bloody remains and even has the audacity to follow me around the whole country until I give up and log out.

Such acts were not uncommon when I played WoW, it didn't, of course, make it better that I played on a PVP server, a whole world where the sole objective seemed to be the humiliation of your character. You could of course argue that I played on the wrong server, that I should have chosen a more peaceful and solemn realm where characters such as GANKMASTA and LOLWUTOWNEDBONKDIE are stuff of legend only. But this idea was defeated by one obstacle: all my friends played on that server, forcing me to endure people blasting my ass just so that I could have a social life.

Since that time I have despised everything that involves people banging at each other with swords, guns or arcana, every time I see the features of a new MMO and it says something along the line of: PVP extraordinaire it immediatly becomes a failure in my books. PVP is a blight upon the landscape of roleplaying and, sadly for me, it has become one of the most coveted aspects of the online gaming world.

Only MMO that I find to have ever created a smart way to implement a player versus player environment is the game called City of heroes (and its counterpart: City Of Villains). They first created the Arena, a place where heroes could spar and other could watch through small cameras. This place was not overly popular but some still use it to this day. When the aforementioned City Of Villains came out, a bunch of zones dedicated for player versus player interaction was introduced, bringing a whole new aspect to the game. Players could alter the control of the zone, help in securing a nuclear warhead or secure alien artefacts, all while being put against each other. This was not unlike the PVP of games like World of Warcraft BUT, it was voluntary and that is my ultimate request for game developers everywhere: make the fucking PVP VOLUNTARY!

Now living on Empire Avenue!

So, like some ancient tomb this blog has once again opened to reveal an insight into the daily grind, hustle, bustle and momentum of my life as a now 19-year-old student standing on the edge of the ginormous vortex known as real life.

Therefore, to document this brink i will strive to, once again, revive this blog and attempt to keep it at least semiconscious this time.

On an entirely different note: I have been accepted into the online stock-exchange known as Empire Avenue. This funny little game will record your activity on the net and, from the gathered information, issue you with a price tag from where people can buy stocks in you.

This is the actual reason for me to bring out the crash cart and attempt a revival of this little sunny patch is that I will, in the end of this post, write a sequence of numbers and letters that the rss grabber at Empire Avenue will catch and thereby link the rss feed to my profile. Propably through magic or something in that direction.

Anyway, I have now returned to the Intarwebs and therefore: let it be cried from every server tower that SKT_Thomas is here to stay!

Verification Code: EAVB_EUTQLZHGIF