Orcs Must Die! 2 appears to be one-third to one-quarter as fun as it looks on paper. It's a tower defense game. You play as a War Mage guy or a Sorceress lady (and more that unlock over time) that runs around summoning towers and shooting orcs in the face when you get the chance. The music is pretty catchy and the traps are very diverse. A good time, right? Eh, not really.
It's hard to explain, but I was just bored for most of the game. All progression comes in the form of unlocking levels and collecting gold during those levels. That's fine enough for towers, but I'm playing a character! Why doesn't he level up? Why can't he get collect gear? Why aren't there character-specific traps and abilities? Sure, the little soundbites and the victory dances at the end of the level are great (especially the dances, that was an awesome surprise), but that doesn't actually motivate me to keep playing. This game came out after Dungeon Defenders which has all of those things and more, why isn't there any innovation?
Everything else is fine enough, but I wouldn't recommend that someone go out and grab this game. I'm sure the game is a bit more exciting once multiplayer kicks in, but what, really, is the point? They'll be just like you! Just more of the same. I'll have to check out the original Orcs Must Die sometime, but that may be a while.
Antichamber. It's minimalist, confusing, and fantastic. The easiest way to describe it is to imagine that the labyrinth in the movie Labyrinth swallowed the Portal games but left all the muppets and David Bowie behind. The design is sharp and physical laws of matter are completely disregarded for the player's benefit. I would definitely recommend it as both a puzzler and an exploration game.
I'm doing well. As the title indicates, I'm at work and I'm bored. I work at a great little company called inthinc. Shortly put, we produce vehicle tracking devices that are used by companies with large fleets of vehicles. I work in Tech Support, which is definitely the bottom of the barrel, but it's a great gig for someone who hasn't finished (or has no interest in) a college degree. I have very high performance overall at work, if I say so myself, and sometimes (like today) I finish up all my work early and don't have anything left to do for the rest of the day except wait for phone calls.
It is during this waiting time that I struggle. Playing on the internet is discouraged and there is quite a bit of traffic by my desk, so I try to be discrete or to find new projects. I've decided that blogging will be a better use of time than Facebook or taunting people in the Tech Support group on Skype. Most of the posts on here will still be the same kuality jernilizm you have come to expect on this site. But if I'm not in the mood to work on those, I'll just write up a more personal post. Like this one! I know I have a personal blog...but I'd rather keep it all in one place.
Anyway, It's January. The time of the year when people try to get their ducks in a row. As for me, I'm trying to get school and career things more in order. I'm doing really well at work and I keep my eye out for new positions here but nothing has panned out yet. I would totally go to another company for more money, but nothing tempting has come up for that either ;).
This past Fall, I was informed that I was on academic suspension for the next year so I can't take any classes. Blerg. My GPA was too low after taking three classes.... Kind of pathetic. I did very poorly on my first course at the end of 2012 because I started my new job and life stuff. Apparently my next two courses were not enough to pull me back up, so now I have to wait. I know there are several classes I can get credit for by just testing out of them. I'm trying to get in contact with my adviser to see if I can do that while I'm suspended or what, but I haven't heard anything back yet.
Also, I want someone to pay me for being involved with video games. Playing games, making games, writing about games...any of those would be nice. The writing part can be improved by this blog. The making part is harder, because I need to get better at programming and school problems make that hard. I know I could just do it on my own, but it's hard to keep up on without deadlines. The playing part would mean streaming, which is a lot of fun, but my laptop struggles with it. Last night I wiped out the hard drive and we'll see if that helps it at all. I think it will, but we'll see how it goes. I do think I'll be able to get up to a pretty high level of competition in Hearthstone, which should get me some viewers, especially once it is officially released. I'll depend on all of you to watch my stream and tell your friends about it! Or, at the very least, open up the stream and mute it and leave it running the background somewhere so I get a viewer boost :P.
So you may have noticed new little box on the top right of the page. That's a link to my new stream! I've been trying to get a video aspect to the blog going and I've finally gotten some of the software to work out for me. The link for the stream is www.twitch.tv/mikeyh907. You can watch it by just clicking on the video on the top right.
If I'm not currently streaming you can click on the link below the box and it will take you to the stream page where you can see recordings of previous streams and such. There's only one there now, which I'll include at the bottom of this post, wherein I try to get all the sound and video stuff worked out and end up playing some Tribes very poorly for about 15ish minutes. It's not actually very exciting yet, but I'm planning on using it to supplement written posts as well as to try out new games. The current video and sound quality is less than HD because I'm still using free software. I'll upgrade when I get the spare cash (feel free to hit that donate button if high quality video feeds are important to you).
So, here's the first video. Excuse the hair.
Also, you can follow me on the Twitters (@mikeyh907) to get notices when I'm going to be streaming.
