A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

Died before level 20. Threw out executable (again), emptied trash. Need a shower. (I mean: literally.)

I sort of feel that my occasional public railing against digital games that function mostly through their continual and entirely illusory exploitation of one's accomplishment-drive makes me like unto a gay-bashing Republican who desperately cruises public restrooms when nobody's watching. (Yes, redundant definition, wev.) On the other hand, I deny nothing, and at least can confidently speak from experience.

Here is a much less psychotic looking picture of me at the lakeside, though my head is still huge because it was taken at arm's length with the iBook's built-in camera.

( Someday I will re-assemble my camera-shaped camera. )

I proclaimed this to be a working vacation and I did work, to an extent. Put in all the time I could for the client - only about three hours, before my plate was clean - and kicked Volity around a little. Made palpable progress towards the demo but there are too many bugs to fix before that can happen, and this just isn't the environment for swatting bugs. Gotta be at my own desk for that.

Started a new Angband character (a Dunedain ranger) and am having maybe my best game yet. Controlling the urge to just play and play fairly well, this time, though I wonder if that will remain true when I'm back by myself in Somerville. There's novelty with this character - she's become deadlier with a bow than anyone I've run through the dungeon previously - and I am having honest fun with it, though there's still a distinct and unpleasant aftertaste of addiction after each play session. We'll see what happens. Anyway, I finally learned how to use the targeting command and my dude killed Wormtongue yesterday, which in my experience is the point where the game starts to get really interesting. (Whenever you manage to splat your first non-Farmer Maggot-related unique, anyway.)

Learned to play Tigris & Euphrates this weekend, and decided I really like it, though I'm quite far from figuring out any sense of good play. I've felt vaguely bad for years that I didn't know how to play this T&E, though, which is considered a high water-mark of modern board games. I did play it once before, and for whatever reason it didn't take and I found it confusing and frustrating.

General personal rule I've recognized for some time but need to enforce better: If my opponents point out a good move to make, and it is different from a good move I had been eyeing, I should not make that move even if it seems better. Since the people I usually play games with are my awesome friends, I do not accuse them of deceitfully metagaming me; rather, it's a personal fault to always see a new suggestion as better than one that I came up with myself. Their decision may be wise, but mine is based on the most intimate knowledge of my personal game state and sense of how I'm likely to follow through on the move. In yesterday's game, I ignored a tile-placement suggestion at first but took advantage of it a couple of turns later, and it scored big for me. But later I made a game-ending move right when it was pointed out to me, and ended up losing by one point. Was still a fun and rewarding game, but: yes, that's enough of that.

Puzzle Quest is a dangerous game. I thought it'd be a match-three game (like Bejeweled) with RPG elements, but I got it backwards; it's an RPG that uses match-three games to resolve battles. The design is smart and surprisingly deep. It's gotten both classicaljunkie and I hooked. (Cruelly enough, the game card has room for two separate characters' save slots, allowing for exactly this sort of two-person trade-off addiction. Argh.)

Basically, matching jewels gives you mana, gold, or experience points, or hurts your enemy, depending on the jewels' color. There are also four colors of magic (tied to the four elements), and you can cast class-dependent spells if you can collect the right combinations of mana. (Yes, you have a character class.) The equipment you carry into battle adds various modifiers and bonuses, as with any RPG.

My favorite single feature: After you beat up a single type of enemy three times, you're given the option to try capturing it the next time you run across one. If you accept, you're given an actual puzzle to solve, where you have to clear the whole board of gems in as few moves as possible. If you succeed the beastie goes off to your pokedex dungeon, where (depending upon how many legs it has) you can try to convert it into a mount, or try to learn its spells. In either case you have to play yet more match-three games with different rules. This is why my warrior is presently loping around the map upon a giant rat. Its name is Bitey.

It's also got a Angband-like system of elemental-based resitstances. As you get deeper in the game you meet an increasing number of enemies who can pound you flat with some special ability that's tied to one of the four elements, and countering it means finding a magic item that grants you protection against that element. Unlike the formal, mission-based storyline, the game doesn't spell the solution out for you, and you've got to explore and figure out which shops or baddies are holding these trinkets, building your own dependency tree of monster bashing. Sadly, I am a sucker for this.

I can generally recommend this game to any Nintendo DS owner with either iron self-control or nothing at all to do for the next week or so.

Wide awake at 5 a.m. due to caffeine withdrawal backlash. I hadn't blogged about it yet, but an interesting thing I started doing a week or two ago was to successfully cut my coffee consumption down to one big cup a day (first thing in the morning) and keep myself on an even keel the rest of the day by guzzling green tea. This has actually worked out very well. I still gets my caffeine, but not enough to give me jitters into the afternoon or evening, and without all the gut-churning acid that comes with high coffee consumption. I haven't had any all-day crippling stomachaches since I started this regimen, which is wonderful.

Yes, up until now I've been suffering from occasional all-day crippling stomachaches for, oh, a year or two. I don't think I ever mentioned them here, probably because I didn't want to face up to the fact that this was almost assuredly a decade of massive coffee abuse catching up with me. But then it came to pass that earlier this month I was playing Wario Ware: Touched! on my DS and was messing around with a minigame that involves a cartoon Japanese grandmother drinking green tea and I thought to myself hmm, green tea, what a good idea. True story.

Yesterday, though, I needed to refresh my home tea supply but saw that Shaw's didn't seem to have any of the stuff I liked, so experimentally got an inexpensive mint-flavored green blend. It was dreadful, so today I didn't bother making any tea. And so it came to pass that I became dead tired at 1am, which sounds pretty good, except that I was woken up at 4 by a headache and an arm-ache. Yes, my right forearm hurt on the inside, on the blood or bone level. Or so it seemed, anyway; I theorize that the headache was actually reaching down into my neck and right shoulder, and in sleep-deprived confusion I wasn't sure what was hurting. Once I could think straight I figured I was probably dehydrated and, sigh, suffering from withdrawal, so I used two glasses of water to wash down two Excederins (these being caffeine-and-aspirin pills). And I think I was on the money because I feel fine now, but the pills roused me to full wakefulness, and here I am.

Long and short of it is that I today - well, yesterday - proved by accident that I have reduced my coffee habit, which is great, but my caffeine dependency remains strong. Still, I think I have made a net lifestyle improvement. Just have to be more mindful about it.