Genshin Impact how many years/months in?

Just the other night a friend said he had gotten back into Genshin Impact. I recently reinstalled it on a laptop (it's way too big for my phone now), so I launched it up to check on my status. I tend to stick with games, even if I'm not sure why I'm still playing. I remember logging into Stronghold Kingdoms on Steam, as a free-to-play player for months on end, only to have my towns destroyed forcing me to start from scratch again.

Genshin, however, I stopped mainly cos of the space issue. So it's been awhile since I played. I've only just started in Sumeru, so I'm way behind on the main story. And don't get me started on the side-quests. I still have plenty to do in Inazuma, and I just breezed through The Chasm to get out of it as fast as I could.

Still, I have decent characters at least.

Where were you...when Faker won his 4th Championship?

It's been a long road back to the top, and after a promising early year for T1 (followed by a rocky LCK Summer Split), the team made it to LoL Worlds 2023 where they breezed through to the knockout stage, only to be the LCK's last hope and having to run through the LPL gauntlet to finally raise the trophy and be crowned the World Champions last Sunday! I was at home, watching while the rest of the family was resting post-tahlil. I had already made them wait an hour and a half just to catch New Jeans in the Opening Ceremony, then everyone dispersed so I could enjoy the games.

And what a thrilling series it was! T1 played through the top triangle, with Keria pulling off some amazing moves in teamfights. Quarters and Semis were good series too, and this year's Finals didn't disappoint, even though it was a clean 3-0.

So SKT/T1 won their 4th Worlds trophy, and so did their Unkillable Demon King mid-laner, Faker. Congrats to the team!

My own inconsistent spelling paradigms

I picked up the Wordle habit recently, and today's puzzle tripped me up a bit. As a product of mostly British schools I stubbornly stick to "ou" vs. "o" spellings, although I've picked up the nasty habit of using "z" instead of "s" in a lot of places. I even realised it earlier today when I did a routine spellcheck on an old document and I was prompted to change the document region from American English to British English, just to keep my "ou" spelling. This is all just an excuse to explain today's 5 guesses required.

State of personal gaming – Feb 2010

I’ve got an RTS/Action itch that I just can’t scratch. I’m getting some light action with Diablo 2 (re-installed a ramp-up of Diablo 3 hype), but most of my gaming needs are taken care of on Facebook at the moment. Facebook has always been an app-centric platform, which – to me – was what really differentiated it from the likes of Friendster.

So this is what I’m playing right now:

Castle Age

(Level 189)

This has taken over my Utopia inclinations. Game with a fantasy setting, building an army through collecting units and items, but with the option to play completely cooperatively. I think the best change they made to the game was introducing Monsters to fight. It’s a much more social game as a result. In fact, I’ve added close to 400 “friends” to FB just to become more effective at CA. It’s about having enough people looking for Elite Guards, and having enough people to answer your Monster CTA’s.

I’m spending the most time on this game, and having the most fun with it too.

FishVille

(Level 33)

This one’s just as a stress reliever. It’s nice to have a few tanks of imaginary fish you can’t really kill through neglect. And cleaning the tanks is such a breeze. Hehe.

Country Story

(Level 30)

This is my CS. Not Counter Strike. Country Story. I’ve never really been a fan of shooters anyway. The only shooter I ever got into was Halo.

Restaurant City

(Level 32)

This is the first “game” that I really took seriously. Before RC were games such as Scrabble, or Boggle, or whatever the FB apps are now called (copyrights, people).

I still like it for the interior decorating aspect.

Crazy Planets

(Level 11)

A’isyah made me join this. One day we were gardening in CS when she noticed this button on the side. That’s good advertising. It attracted her attention, and she asked, “Can we play this?” So off I went to add the app, and we were playing soon after. A’isyah’s the one playing this; I help out once in a while only.


Outside of Facebook, all I’m playing is:

Diablo 2 (Asia Realms)

I’ve got three chars on the Realms right now. I’ve also got some old single player chars that I play when the Realm connection sucks (which still happens).

Level 39 Paladin – built as an Avenger, and doing some leveling before taking on Baal.
Level 12 Amazon – trying out a Javazon, still in Act 1.
Level 9 Necromancer – not sure what build, still in Act 1.


And that’s it. I haven’t been following game news for a while now. All I know is I’ll be there for Diablo 3. Before that? Not sure yet.

Massively multiplayer...Monopoly!

Eh?

I just found out that Hasbro has been working on a massively multiplayer online game version of Monopoly. And here’s the cool bit: it’s based off Google Maps, so you’re dealing with real streets in real cities, all over the world! And for additional oomph there will be SketchUp buildings that can be used in the “game”.

The game is called Monopoly City Streets, and there’s a blog at Blogger here. It’s unclear whether this is an official collaboration with Google, or Hasbro is just utilizing all Google tools for this game.

At the moment, this game will run for four months only, ending in January 2010. This promises to be fun!

Dyson – a neat little game, by independent game designers

I discovered this gem of a title from a Malaysian gaming blog, which has a section for free games. Being a rather poor gamer (sob, sob), with old hardware (sob, sob), I’m always on the lookout for good, free options to quench my gaming thirst.

Dyson was developed by Alex May and Rudolf Kremers, and was entered in this year’s Independent Games Festival. The 26.4Mb installer is downloadable from www.Dyson-game.com. It doesn’t require much in terms of computing resources, and, although there’s some delay on loading the game, it runs fine on basic hardware even when there are hundreds of little units flying around.

The premise of the game is simple enough. It most closely resembles an RTS in gameplay mechanics. The game map is a mix of different-sized asteroids, each with different levels in three attributes. Your units are “seeds” that fly around, orbiting asteroids or flying from one to another. But you don’t directly control the seeds. You can only give them instructions to fly from one asteroid to another within range, or to plant trees (two types: unit producing, or defensive) to colonize asteroids. The seeds behave according to pre-set mechanics, and have the attributes of their originating asteroids.

The minimalist design, both in terms of gameplay and aesthetics, is very pleasing and engaging. There are currently only 6 levels, and no multiplayer (not even planned), but it still promises a challenging experience. The developers promise that they still have further plans for the game, expanding the possibilities and improving on the AI. Even as it is, though, it still offers up a fun gaming experience, and I’m sure even after you complete the game you can still come back to Dyson for an occasional rush. After all, watching hundreds of seeds asteroid-hopping and crushing all resistance is fun!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to figure out how to beat level 5. You can check out a review of Dyson here.

Itching to game

It’s been ages since I played a game. Starting to feel the “itch”. I never got my fill of Dawn of War or even Supreme Commander (which I came to very late). Problem is, I’m running outdated hardware, so the latest games are out of reach anyway. Even some of the games on Jumboplay are not playable on my old laptop. I should probably just cancel that service.

The last game I gave any time to was TrackMania Nations, which didn’t quite scratch the same itch as (the original) Re-Volt. Incidently, Re-Volt was the game that finally prompted me to get a video card for my old Gateway PC. There’s really nothing else out there (racing game-wise) that I’ve encountered that captures the same sense of fun as Re-Volt. Still, TrackMania Nations is decent fun. Too bad I can’t play it on my current laptop.

Probably time to plug in the ol’ XBox, since I’m not getting a new laptop anytime soon. Or any new games either, for that matter.

Gordon Freeman to be put in charge of security at LHC

Life imitates art, or, how games have made a huge impact on popular culture/the modern psyche.

Anyone daring to call themselves a gamer knows about Half-Life, arguably one of the most influential games of the modern era. Even if you've never played it (putting you in the minority of gamers), you've heard of it. Even if you're not a gamer, I'd hazard a guess that you've heard of it.

Heck, even the scientists at theLarge Hadron Collider, which is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator, have heard of it. Of course, being geeks, it's really no surprise that they have. (Seriously, people: Scientists -> Geeks -> Gamers. We're talking almost totally inclusive sets, although the reciprocal isn't true.)

For evidence of the above phenomenon, take the jump (below) to see the new security training regimen at the LHC, which has scientists practicing with a crowbar. Serious stuff people. Could save the world, and what-not.