T w e n t y S i d e d

You’ve heard me sing this song before, but it bears repeating. The article came to fruition while I was playing LOTRO and I suddenly had to gain 20 levels of being a warrior so I could continue my career as a chef. I needed to kill one particular boar, ignoring the thousands of boars in the world that I could slaughter without effort. (Or that fact that “raise pigs” is not exactly an advanced technology.) The excuse given for why I needed the level 40 boar would do was… an excuse.

I managed to get a player from my kinship (Knights of the Third Age) to help me out. And by “help” I mean, he did it for me and I followed him around and tried to not get one-shotted to death by any of the monsters. So the task was either impossible or effortless. In either case, what exactly was the point of the exercise again? Neither option enriched my enjoyment of the game, and I’m still fantasizing about a gameworld which simply doesn’t presume to tell me how to have fun.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

No joke today. I play it straight and say goodbye to Robert Culp.

Okay, one joke. But it’s not mine. Seen in a forum somewhere:

Cast members to have died so far while waiting for Episode 3: 1

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Never before has greed and misanthropy been so gosh-darn adorable.

This week we do some quests in the Shire, and even dabble in crafting a bit.

I will say that I like the farming in LOTRO, even though I can’t figure out why. (My main is a Master Supreme Farmer.) It’s not really a game. There’s no strategy or skill involved. It’s just busywork. This should be something I hate. If a developer had shown me the design document for the farming gameplay I would have rolled it up and swatted them on the nose with it. But in the end it’s probably the most interesting crafting system I’ve tried. I still think there’s lots of room for improvement, but whatever they’re doing here, it’s a step in the right direction.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I have crafted another one of those web-comic dealies, and I offer it here for your perusal.

It’s not often I get genuinely excited about a sequel. I am excited about Portal. To my shame, my enthusiasm comes from screenshot preview hype mag Game Informer, which I usually regard as little more than a catalog. Please understand that I usually know better than to be swayed by anything the magazine has to say. I mean, they hand it out for free. At Gamestop. This is not a place you should turn if you want a clear-headed critical opinion on a game. Or anything else.

But the Portal 2 article found a gap in my armor of distrust and cynicism. I read it all the way through. On purpose, and without irony. And now I want the game.

It’s going to be a long year.

(Right here is a good place for a paragraph asking about Half-Life 2: Episode 3, but I just don’t have it in me today.)

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.