Spiritual Successor

...or sequel, depending on which pot you dip for ink. I'm tired of it, and you Video Game Reviewing hacks need to let it go. Let me introduce you to a new phrase - trite. That's when you use a phrase so much it begins to smell like old fish (I'm paraphrasing).

All through Bioshock's development we heard how it was a spiritual successor to System Shock 2. So much so that there are blessed few articles one can read on the game that don't include that comment in the first or second paragraph (if not the title).

And why am I on a boil about this. Well, it's got nothing to do with Bioshock. Bioshock is design-o-matically very much like Ken Levine/Irrational's (2k Boston if you insist...) earlier System Shock 2. It is a spiritual successor. It incorporates many of the design ideals of the early system, enhances and refines them and presents a new story (which actually shares a lot of plot points. Ok, Ken apparently has only one story to tell. But it's a great story and he executes well).

Hellgate:London is not a spiritual sequel to Diablo (and really not to the greater Diablo II). At best it's a clone. And don't get me wrong, from what I have of it Hellgate:London has it's charms. But it lacks many of the refinements introduced in Diablo II to the ARPG (Action Role Playing Game. Means bash monsters for loot so you can bash bigger monster for bigger loot, repeat until you get arthritis in your left mouse finger...). It is not successor to DII's crown. DII still has that crown set upon its mighty brow. Long live the king.

I dearly yearn for a modern revisit of the genre. I can only hope that Blizzard will abandon the MMO madness and produce a Diablo III in a 3d Engine, which supports heavy character customization (if I have 1 complaint about Diablo, it's cookie cutter characters - a Barb is a Barb, even if you have an axe barb and I have a throwing barb). Titan Quest seemed close, for that matter, except for the claustrophobic dungeons and lack of any real plot so does Hellgate.

But I'm still killing time on an MMO as far as this genre is concerned. That's what MMOs do, kill time.

G.E. Cards

In which it occurs to me that G.E. is not a good name to try to publish a game under, being that General Electric may object. Anyways...
G.E. Cards - Jean-Paul Lapointe's Galactic Empire: The Card Game, and yes it is a goal to have the name be so long there is no room for art on the box, is pretty cool. It is not 100%, David and I found several things which were broken, some of which will be addressed in v.002, but v.001 was playable. To be certain, the basic mechanics of play remain intact and are, dare I say it, fun.
It really seems to work. At least with two people. Having said that I will need to visually redesign about 2/3 of the cards. We've decided that square cards don't quite work with the facing mechanic for ownership. Turning the card so the ones you own are readable by you is ok, if the cards you own are all next to you on the table. When your cards are mixed in with the cards of the other players, square cards all look the same.
The game really needs another chart for tracking the Basic resources received per turn per player. Although it was easier to see the exchanges from basic resources to advanced resources, we often found ourselves counting our planets for basic production. An income chart will do the job.
I need to add in some flavor. I don't want to break any of the mechanics, so this will be a small step. But it's just not G.E. without the Jaal Riin and the U.E.P.

Costume Pictures

All righty - I finally found my USB cable for my camera so here are some shots. First Erik as Symbiont Spiderman.

And some Zachary Potter.
Yes, the only symbiont suit we could find had no mask. Probably why it was on the shelf, so dad had to figure out if he could paint faces. Turns out the answer is, "yes, good enough."

The jack-o-lantern wasn't my best, but I rushed a bit. Fortunately, you can barely tell it's actually carved.

Today, BTW, is the 30th birthday of the Atari VCS. As I mentioned previously, this was the very first machine I owned. I guess, when I look at it that way, may it's not all that surprising that I've gone back to consoles. I wonder if they have Asteroids on xBox Live Arcade...

Zachary - R0x0rs with his b0x0rs

Zachary was super awesome older brother last night. Not only did he Trick-or-Treat well past his last years operational radius, stay off peoples lawns and remember to say thank-you, after Erik quit (he got cold) he would ask for extra loot for his little brother.

For 6, super awesome. Like triple cheese awesome with hand tossed crust.