Black Prophecy Quick Thoughts

I play a ton of games and wanted to start writing about them more frequently. Probably won't be a lot of substance in these posts, but I'll try to make sure these amuse-bouches are fantastic. That's bouche, not douche.

Black Prophecy is a space dogfighting MMO. Sounds a bit like EVE Online, no? The key difference is that in EVE, you tell your ship where to go (i.e. orbit this celestial body at 10km at this speed, or approach this station at this speed). In Black Prophecy, you directly control the ship.

Some of the best games of all time have been space sims. Like TIE Fighter. Freespace 2. Even Freelancer did some brilliant things. When Black Prophecy finally released a North America beta client, I dove in.

You can see the light at the end of the tunnel

Some scary and awesome things are happening at the moment. I realize most of these things didn't happen JUST NOW but I think the combination of all of them is really cool.

Digital Downloads are amazing for pretty much any medium. I haven't had to go to a bookstore in years thanks to my Kindle/Kindle app. I don't seem to be the only one as Borders is dead. I have bought a large quantity of games the last few years, fewer and fewer at Best Buy and Gamestop.  I haven't purchased a physical music album in years.

Free to play games are also becoming more and more palatable. Sure, the bizarre business strategy from Asia still has some kinks to work through. A lot of MMOs use the shift to free to play to as the final hail mary for a failed game. I'd put Age of Conan, Champions Online, and Pirates of the Burning Sea in that category. Other MMOs, like Lord of the Rings Online have been very successful with it. I imagine niche games like Fallen Earth will prosper and grow more with such a business model. Even traditional shooters like World of Tanks and now Arma 2 are free to play. I know the former is successful and I believe the latter will slowly grow and prosper more with such an offering.

Enamored of the Free that Isn't

I find my game time dominated by a small portion of free-to-play (aka freemium, f2p) games that have all, surprisingly, earned money from me. No, I'm not talking about games on Facebook or even iPhone apps. These are huge games on the PC!

I still think the majority of Facebook and iPhone free-to-play games need to do more to entice me, both as a player and a payer. But, if World of Tanks and Spiral Knights are indicative of the future, I'm all for it.

Farewell, Telara

After 90 hours of playing between two classes, a level 32 Defiant Cleric and a level 16 Guardian Rogue, I've cancelled my subscription to Rift. From this statement it seems I was dissatisfied or didn't enjoy the game, which absolutely shouldn't be the takeaway.

One of the best moments in Rift. A massive titan emerged from this portal entirely unexpectedly. I had a few missions that led up to me destroying him. Still furious UI was in the shot despite me checking the box that said "Hide UI."

Wurmin' Around

A friend and I downloaded Wurm Online and took a spin in its free server. Overall not a very fun game. It's very ugly visually and has probably the most unintuitive interface in history. It feels like layers and layers were added to deliberately make the game difficult and not fun.

After about 2 hours we were done for good. We were hoping to find an empty spot in the world, chop some trees, and begin making something. Unfortunately, the world seems incredibly settled, yet every settlement was empty. There were no wild animals to challenge us. Just mountains and water everywhere to impede movement.

The highlight of the game was when we stole a canoe called the "tarantula."

There's a quick scrapbook of our journey after the jump.

My First Days in the Apocalypse

I recently started playing Fallen Earth, a post-apocalyptic MMO that is somewhere around its first year of life. It had a rough start at first, but it is still around and from what I can tell is polished enough to enjoy.

Overall I like the game. The UI works, the players seem to be largely helpful, and I really enjoy the theme. It's not more swords and elves, which I must admit I'm tired of. The game has a sense of loneliness that I really appreciate. It's something I love about EVE. You can explore for a long time without seeing anyone, though I imagine this is more due to the size of their world and small player base than a deliberate design choice.

Some thoughts on specific features after the jump.