Blog Baltimore

I bought Homerun Battle 3D for my Motorola Droid because I felt it was time to start checking out the more advanced games (of which the market is LACKING!!!) I have to say, I love it! It was a bit confusing at first because the game somehow skipped the tutorial and threw me right in so I wasn’t placing the bat in the right place. The second time I loaded it the tutorial kicked in and I finally realized how it works.

The game uses the accelerometer to set the position of the bat and then you tap the screen to swing. The positioning starts as soon as the pitcher starts so if you’re phone is upside and backwards when the pitching starts, good luck!

At first it was tricky working with the pitching but I’ve gotten better and am now playing online against other batters. Apparently this also includes iPhone users so I get a happy feeling in my stomach every time I win in hopes that some iPhone user is crying somewhere.

Homerun Battle 3D also supports the purchase of merchandise for your batter. As you earn golden balls you can use them to purchase accessories which make your batter better. I don’t know if these accessories are usable in multi-player yet, haven’t gotten that far.

http://global.com2us.com/game/slugger

I recently visited a shop called Graphic Novelty in Fells Point. I was down in Fells to do some Christmas shopping and that’s when we strolled past this magnificent play land of toys, comics, models, and just plain geek heaven. Immediately upon entering you get a sense that they are not about being an elitist collector but about offering everything that is awesome. Their glass case holds toys that I haven’t set eyes on in years, and immediately I found a Robotech model that I had to have.

The rest of the store holds shelves upon shelves or comic books, graphic novels, comic movies and anime movies. Their comic books aren’t just your run-of-the-mill Marvel/DC either. They have local comics and specialty comics. I was truly impressed and had a blast shopping there. Stopping in will most likely be a part of my Saturday routine of soccer at Slainte.

View Location of Graphic Novelty

Another article on Graphic Novelty

ABC’s Wipeout is setting up downtown by the waterfall for something, possible trails for the show maybe? Pictures to follow when I get in to work.

I downloaded Sid Meier’s Civilization IV: War of Two Cities for my Verizon cell phone and it’s a decent game. I wasn’t upset to spend the money on it. The game provides fun for those moments where you’ve got a few minutes to kill. The game play kind of works like a side scrolling real time strategy game. There’s not a lot a complication to the combat, you have to push units out of your base that walk to the enemies base and take over structures along the way. You also have a cannon on your main capitals city that you can use to select the velocity and trajectory in order to attempt to weaken the enemies defenses or take out units.

The game also posses a campaign mode where you progressively fight harder countries and can develop your own country and attributes, such as better range on units or quicker troop movement through forests.

It’s not overly complicated like the Civilization can tend to be so it can be played by almost all ages.

One of my roomates picked up Grand Theft Auto 4 for the Playstation 3 (which I’ll write about later). I played and loved GTA 3, the graphics are definitely nice and there’s no shortage of debauchery. Rockstar put a lot of thought in to the game, for example, my roommate right now is driving around in a stolen cop car that he’s unintentionally destroyed. The car has 3 lights left on the top and the siren is all screwed up, changing pitch much more sporadically than it normally does.

Rockstar also made the city look awesome. It feels to me that there is a very slight haze all over the view, which adds a cool element. So far the plot line has been pretty good, I haven’t been following it as much since I only really seem to enjoy flying around the city in one of the motorcycles, pissing off the cops and doing crazy stuns on the airplane runway.

One problem I do have with the game is the level of violence. I don’t know if it’s that I’m getting older and am starting to stomach it less but one of the very first fights the roommate got in to involved stabbing a guy with a knife till he dropped to the ground. It was quite a shocking thing to see and maybe it was just the realism but I didn’t find it appealing. There’s also the fact that as you run through pedestrians in your car you pick up their blood, almost like paint splash on the side of the car. The realism of the guns is even more disturbing. You can mow down a crowd with an Uzi and blood will go flying.

The only saving grace, if you can call it that, is that besides missions, if you mow down an entire crowd with a gun and they fall to the ground, they’ll usually get back up. You can keep working them and they’ll stay down but maybe this is Rockstar’s way of saying that it’s just a game and no one dies (which was proved wrong 10 minutes in to the game.)

I will still continue to enjoy flying through the city at top speeds trying to stay on my motorcycle while attemping to avoid smashing in to cars.

If you’re inside a building with no easy access to windows, get to one! The rain is coming down fast and hard outside in downtown Baltimore and no umbrella is safe from the wind. It’s perfect kite flying season if you have a death wish! It looks as though buckets (or the culmination of all the rain that we were supposed to have received over the past couple of years) is falling from the sky and it’s dark enough to make you think it’s night time.

Have fun getting home everyone! Be safe!

EDIT:

Per “Stab Master Arson’s” request, I cleaned up the post a bit so it actually makes sense. I’ll be posting video shortly!

Storm in Baltimore

I picked the new Mario Kart for the Wii and it’s been a damned good distraction from my homework! The play control is something that takes getting used to if you use the steering wheel they give you but I will say that it’s working much better then I thought. It’s not like a real steering wheel where you have a 270 degree turn but it’s still better some of the wheels I’ve used. It is a bit tough having it free formed since you can now scratch, steer, and run your guy off the track at the same time. The motorcycle aspect of the racing is a bit rough since you tend to over steer almost every turn (I’m watching my roomate run his guy off the edge every 3 seconds on the star course.)

I’m hoping most of all though that nintendo took some precautions when doing the online play so that we don’t have the same screw ups we had on the DS.

I’m not upset with this purchase so far. One thiing that did suprise me though, and maybe I just wasn’t looking hard enough, but I didn’t see much in the way of good RPG’s. I have the Zelda game but I haven’t quite gotten in to that. I’ve been playing Crisis Core for the PSP and I guess I’m just looking for some good engaging RPG for the Wii. If you have any suggestions on ones that you’ve played and enjoyed, let me know.

Is Nintendo finally wising up and going after the software piracy on their DS by changing out the games work within the carts? With the new release of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles The Rings of Fate for the DS the piracy sites have been all a buzz about the warning screen that shows up randomly. The screen will pop up and say “Thank you for playing.” I’ll give credit to Nintendo for trying, I would truly to what ever I could if I was losing out on millions of dollars a year due to piracy.

I’ll admit, I’ve checked what all the talk is about and it’s way to easy for some one to go out and purchase what is needed to pirate games on the Nintendo DS. Worst of all it’s not like the places to get these games are hard to find.

I can understand the desire for home brew on the DS, as a matter of fact, it should be fully supported by Nintendo. Some of the games that I’ve played that are considered home brew are phenomenal games; they’re fun and innovative and at the same time free.

Nintendo, I applaud you at your attempt to protect yourself from piracy!

EDIT:

As one of my friends pointed out, this very well could be Squre-Enix more than Nintendo. I’m sure after seeing how many people were stealing Dragon Quest Monters: Joker and playing it online, this could be a response to that.

I used to play an online game a while back called AuricMUD. This game was my only sanity at my previous job where there were long hours with nothing to do. AuricMUD never had an extremely large player base which was probably a good thing. The administrative staff had a very special air about them. Don’t get me wrong, if it wasn’t for the quirkiness of the staff I probably would have left a long time ago.

The MUD, which stands for Multi-User Dungeon, has a lot of the original features of a SMAUG MUD but with a lot less of the mess behind the scenes. Many who’ve administered a SMAUG MUD will know that the coding and administration is very messy due to the lack of courtesy by the original developers to document and provide front end tools. Eos, the head administrator behind the AuricMUD, and his dedicated crew have spent a very long time playing cleanup and overseer to a very rowdy but dedicated bunch of players.

The world has areas that aren’t just hack and slash. There’s something compelling about the rooms and the places that have been built. Sometimes you do something that you could normally do in another MUD and think it would mean nothing and in Auric it could mean the biggest thing in the game. It feels that the team took the time not to just build a world but to build a very quirky world with all sorts of trickery that causes you to think. The world possesses races that make sense, classes that have intrigue, and players who actually care to talk to you.

A lot of MUDs include a slew of races but they just tend to differ on their racial abilities or their experience gain. In AuricMUD you feel that the race you pick has meaning in that if you pick a class like a beholder, you function and work as a beholder, don’t expect to be putting equipment on your legs because you don’t have any. Also the racial abilities and habits of each are there as well. If your race is a vegetarian, expect to only eat greens, if you’re race has wings, expect to be flying quite a bit. All of these funky little details that the staff at AuricMUD has spent so much time on are what makes the world truly fun and memorable.

Above all, the staff always seems to have one interest or another in the goings on of the players and are willing to spend their time either harassing (out of shear playfulness) or participating in the madness that the players bring.

More to come as Eos returns!

EDIT:

The port to connect to for the game is auricmud.com port 3600.
You usually need a telnet style client or a MUD style client to connect. I use Zmud because it’s what I’ve been using since 1997. I’m contemplating switching over to CMud due to some of the improvements.

I’ve linked some below

ZMud or CMud (Pay with trial)
MushClient (Free but a bit tricky to get used to)
Putty (A free beefier version of telnet)

Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker is the next in line from the Dragon Quest Monsters Series and it brings a lot of the elements from the older series back as well as provides some things that makes life a hell of a lot easier. I’m absolutely hooked on this game, the graphics are fantastic, and the game play is rock solid. The engine looks like it’s from the Playstation 2 version of Dragon Warrior 8, just not as shaded and smooth. Either way it’s not your run of the mill Nintendo DS game, they took an extra step in the way of the graphics and look of the game that makes it feel fantastic.

Some of the things they provide in the game that help way beyond the older versions are skill seeds as well a very refined breeding system. Compared to the older games this is a breeze in terms of the time and grind that’s needed. The plot line is much better as well as the level dines are very nice.

I’ve already spent 15 hours on the game and I’ve had it for less than 72 hours. I’d definitely consider this a buy, if not for the fun and control that you have over your monsters (much better than the pokemon crap) but for the wireless options to battle people across the world.