Tropico 5

IntPiPoMo Day 1-4

stargrace November 4, 2015 3 Comments

Never heard of IntPiPoMo before? Well, no time like the present! I’m going to swipe the information from Gamer Girl Confessions, and you can find the post about it here.

NaNoWriMo is about writing 50k words throughout the month of November. If a picture is work a thousand words, that would mean we’d need to post fifty pictures!

These can be screenshots from any game, or even photographs you take in real life and want to share on your blog. They can be anything–character selfies, shots of combat, sharing your game UI, showing off that awesome-tacular Deathclaw kill you got in Fallout 4… you get the idea.

So without further wait, here are my first four screenshots for the IntPiPoMo of 2015. First up, EverQuest 2. Long time readers of this blog will be very familiar with my love affair with this MMO. I played it fairly steadily for 7 years before wandering off – and returning – and wandering off – and returning. It has been a few years since I’ve played with any sort of consistency, but that seems typical for video games. Below I’m wandering around in Commonlands, enjoying the sunset.

Next up, another of my MMO loves (and my current one) Wurm Online. I’ve been playing Wurm for 6 years now, and if ever there was a sandbox to love, well. This is it (at least for me).

Next up, Cities: Skylines. This game (to me) was everything that Sim City should have been, at a more cost effective price. Bugs? Sure, all games have a few of those, but it ran the way I expected a polished product to run, and I had hours of enjoyment from playing. Now they’ve released a few DLC, and while I haven’t picked those up, they are on my wish list.

Finally, we have Tropico 5, and my island being pummeled by natural disasters. That’s OK, my citizens didn’t need homes anyway…

There you have it, the first four days of IntPiPoMo, underway. Expect more screenshots throughout the month, I’ll probably post them in a bundle like this every couple of days instead of posting them individually. Don’t forget, you can participate too! The rules can be found on the post linked above, and it’s a really simple little project to get into. Plus it gets you looking at your screenshots folders – and lets face it, there are probably a lot of those, along with some fantastic memories stored up.

Happy gaming!

Gaming

Happy 9th Anniversary

stargrace June 29, 2015 4 Comments

June 25th marked the 9 year anniversary of this site. Hard to believe it has already been that long. Back when I started I wrote mostly about EQ2, and talked about whatever I happened to be up to. Things like raids, working on major quest lines. Of course I was already working up my alt army, so nothing in that regard has changed. I’ve posted over 2,000 posts, and while I don’t always get that many comments, blogging has always been something I did just for me in the hopes that others out there would enjoy reading what I wrote. Since then I’ve branched out quite a bit. I rarely ever write about one particular game, but weave my posts between where ever my interests lay for that month. I still have my MMO loves, and some single player games, too. Like my Tropico 5 adventures, posted above.

Last week I picked up my very first SSD. Since I had to replace pretty much my entire machine last year, an SSD was the only real ‘upgrade’ I was still lacking. I found a nice 500gb one for less than $200, and researched the multiple ways to set it up. I’ve always been a fan of ‘starting fresh’ rather than cloning and running into potential issues, so I unplugged my two older drives, and installed windows 8.1 on the new SSD (after hunting for spare cables. Why doesn’t anything come with cables any more). No issues with the installation aside from the fact that I forgot I’d need to re-install my motherboard drivers before I could access the internet. Dug up my disks and everything was working well. I think things are smoother (faster) and I learned how to move things like the default windows libraries to my secondary drive so that it doesn’t clutter up space on the SSD.

For now I only have two games on the main drive, WildStar, and Sims 4. Everything else (including my steam library) is on a back up drive. This meant I spent a lot of time browsing through my installed games and remembering what I own. I love Tropico 5. I don’t own any of the expansions and there are far more than I realized (I saw them during the Steam Summer Sale, but refrained from purchasing any) but the humour of the game just tickles me in all the right places. So far I’ve only made it to the Cold War age, but things are coming along nicely. Or at least they were before a volcano erupted, and that was followed by a tsunami which wiped out most of my low lying coastal city. Still, I had more than enough funds to re-build everything and I spent way too many hours playing over the weekend.

Which reminds me, I have all sorts of lego games that are next on my to-play list, too.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Gaming

That Summer Burnout

stargrace June 20, 2015 1 Comment

It happens every year around this time. I can’t figure out what I want to play and so I spend the majority of my time bouncing in and out of various games, hoping one will catch my attention for longer than 20 minutes. Then I feel bad when it doesn’t. It could be the amazing weather, stresses from work, watching friends and family all do their thing while I’m across the country, or something else. I have no idea. I just know that normally when I have a bit of free time (and I’m at home) I think nothing of what game to play and I just do it. These days though I’ll log into 4-5 games only to wander around aimlessly and then decide they were not what I wanted to ‘do’ after all.

I managed to resist every sale on steam – even though there are quite a few DLC I’d love to own on my wishlist. I just didn’t think I was gaming enough to justify the cost at the moment. I’m tired of Early Access games. While I understand that crowdfunding and EA games are a fantastic way to get indie developers into game releases, I’ve just been burned and frustrated too many times. The latest is with Windborne, which sat on my wishlist for over a year before developers announced that they just don’t have the funds to continue.

I can understand that. I understand that we live in an age where there are lots of games out there, and to create something that’s going to be profitable is hard. It’s still frustrating as a player and as a potential investor in these games. I miss the day when I could purchase a completely finished game (or at least what I would consider ‘finished’). There are some great Early Access games out there, but the chances of me being interested in them when they finally release are pretty slim.

What have I been playing lately? Well. The list isn’t that long, but like I said I haven’t been doing a lot of gaming.

Wurm Online: In summer my Wurm interest flags a bit, but I’ve still got two active accounts and deeds, and I still check in daily to take care of crops and animals. I know my interest in this one will pick back up after summer, it always does.
FFXIV: I keep trying to be interested in this one, and it’s just not happening. I still have 44 days active on my account but something about the game is just not appealing to me lately.
WoW: I still have time left on my account, but honestly I just haven’t been playing. Garrison grind is a thing, and I just don’t like it. Not even pets are able to keep me entertained these days.
WildStar: I play daily, and I still enjoy it quite a bit but I limit my time so that I don’t get burned out. Since I work for NCSOFT on WildStar it’s also pretty much a given that I’m playing it daily.
EQ/EQ2: As much as I love the Ragefire server, it’s hard to get into if you’re not already in a community or with established friends. I was hoping it would be more like the communities of days gone by, but so far it hasn’t been and that bugs me to some degree. Instead I’ve been playing EQ2, my old haunting grounds. I’ve been clearing out older heritage quests and playing in my guild on my own, we’re level 78, and I’m having quite a bit of fun with that. My defiler is still only level 96, but I’m not really in a rush to reach level 100. I don’t even know what is available to do at level 100.
EVE Online: I don’t play nearly as much as I should / could / want to, but I do have an active subscription for a year, and in the meantime my skills are training up. I know this is a great game to pop into when I can here and there, so I haven’t been concerned about my lack of playtime.
GW2: Still working on my mesmer, on a new account. Right now she’s 49, which is great but I’d still ideally like to reach 80 before the expansion hits, and maybe get another character or two up there on the new account. We’ll see how that goes. It’s hard when I don’t really have any inclination to play.

Hopefully I climb out of this rut I’ve found myself in before too long. I imagine when fall rolls around I’ll be back to my ‘typical’ gaming self, whatever that is. In the meantime, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Gaming

The Wonders of Tropico 5

stargrace August 17, 2014 No Comments

After falling in love with Tropico 4, it was a great surprise when I was gifted Tropico 5 – and of course I love this version of the game just as much as the previous. It’s a bit more complex this time. I turned the settings down to the easiest ones but left disasters up because hey what’s the point without a little bit of adventure. I do prefer to play these types of games at a relaxed easy pace, and that’s exactly what I got.

I started by playing through campaigns again, and unlike the previous version this time I got to create a ruler who was head of her very own dynasty. Mid way through the first story line there was an illegitimate pregnancy that resulted in my dynasty growing a bit. The costumes are also much more amusing this round. I believe the head of my current dynasty is sporting a halo and wings along with a pacifier. The youngest member is garbed in steampunk clothing.

When I first started playing I was disgruntled with the fact that you can’t build everything you want right away. First you have to work your way through each ‘era’, like war and modern times. Despite these changes the basics are the same. Build up a city, watch it flourish or crash horribly. I’m having an absolute blast with the dynasty story line and the politics that happen. They along with the new trade and commerce options are hilarious. It’s also nice to be getting different ‘challenges’ now, the quests from 4 were repeating themselves quite frequently.

The first few campaigns had me starting on a new map, but now that I’m on the 3rd one, it has me back at my original city (exactly as I left it) which is pretty neat. In the screenshot above I was preparing my city before an invasion was about to hit. I may have over done it just a bit, their tanks didn’t last that long.

All in all, it was a great afternoon spent gaming. Congratulations to those by the way who managed to take advantage of the steam sale where Tropico 4 was only 39 cents.. I see they corrected the issue later on in the day, and I hope a few people made the purchase! As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

IntPiPoMo Day 1-4

Happy 9th Anniversary

That Summer Burnout

The Wonders of Tropico 5

You Missed

Leveling Up With Timewalking

The Construction of Quail Landing

Making Gold – One Sale at a Time

Timewalking, Gets me Every Time