All the DLC

Do memes have expiration dates?
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As yet another Crusader Kings 2 sale rolled around (this time apparently in celebration of the game’s three-year birthday – congrats!) I finally scooped up the last bit of DLC with Charlemagne. And seeing how much I had saved I treated myself to some cosmetics. Cosmetic DLC like new unit models for Saxons and the like, that is. Do I have all the DLC? No but so close it makes no difference. Iberians is where I draw the completely arbitrary line for some reason.

This isn’t really meant to be a rumination on the ethics of Paradox’s DLC policy regarding CK2. It is meant as a celebration that I now have a good reason to start a fresh CK2 campaign all the way back in the 8th century. With chroniclers tracking my every move, with fresh faces, new old clothes and an abundance of ‘historically accurate’ dynasty shields. It’s going to be great.

So, listen up all you fresh-faced, oldtimey-clothed, accurately-shielded people. This time we’re gonna get things right. We’ll plunder the Byzantine dukes but we’ll spread out in groups of three so they can’t raise any armies against us [Yeah!]. We’ll score cheap religious zealotry points by smashing up defenceless Irish churches [Yeah!] And we’ll marry our cousins and breed like bunny rabbits just as soon as we get rid of gavelkind [HELL Yeah! Wait, that won’t be for hundreds of years!? [I know, just… tide yourselves over until then, okay?]]

I might even do a bit of AAR’ing of this attempt. If nothing else it should help me remeber to quit before 1 AM so I can jot down some AA thoughts. That’s usually when I start making decisions based on spite and rage. Wasn’t that also one of Machiavelli’s tips to the young Medici prince? “Layeth downe thy schemes and get thee to bed before the clocke striketh one as thy strategemizing will sucketh thereafter”?

Psychonauts Speedrun

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I love Psychonauts so the idea of somebody breaking it to shortcircuit all the brilliant content and finish it as quickly as possible should be horrid and unwatcheable. Except of course when that person is surrounded by the game’s creators jeering and laughing at the breaking and the short circuiting. This is a measure of how much I love Tim Schaefer: I’m actually jealous of the guy being (jokingly) passive-aggresived by him.

I finished Just Cause 2 and saved the world and all I got was a list of credits

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Apologies for the title. It’s geting late and something like ‘JC2 – thoughts on’ or ‘retrospective’ or ‘post play analysis’ sounded way too serious for something as frivolous as Just Cause 2.

I finished the game over the weekend, having completed all faction and agency missions. It has been quite a ride. However when  rolling down a highway in a tank shooting up all the traffic just to see if anybody will stop you only provokes ennui… well, in the words of Just Cause 2 anonymous bark #126: “It’s time to end this!” Here are some my final thoughts on the game in the hope that I can stop playing now. At 55% completion. I know that the rest is just busywork. Who needs that? Right?

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Veni, vidi, whippi – thoughts on Spelunky strategy

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Okay, so now that I have completed* Spelunky, I obviously feel like I’m in a position to dole out advice on how to do it. This isn’t basic tips or do’s and don’ts like Tom Francis’ blog post from a few years back but more of a general attitude with which to approach the gameplay.

Spelunky – as I’ve said before – is a complex game. Each playthrough presents the player with a huge amount of tiny decisions from the mundane – how to kill the bat heading towards me? – to the strategic – what is my goal for this level? Cash-in-hand? The damsel? Ghost mining? Some specific achievement? Misc.? Complex games tend to develop a body of thoughts on strategy. So the question is: Is abstract strategy applicable to a game like Spelunky or is success just a matter of pure muscle memory?

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Christmas comes early

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I did it. I finally nailed that sucker. The ‘ironman’ way and incidentally also the first time ever and only the second time I got to Olmec’s lair. When my phone gave a a little noise after the whooping and the yelling and the celebrating had subsided, my first thought was that Derek Yu had texted me to congratulate me in person. Man, this feels good.

I don’t wanna go all Oscar overboard but ahem… I wanna thank the guy who wrote this excellent piece on how playing the game helped him cope with multiple sclerosis. I’m sure it’ll inspire much greater things but for me it just nudged me not to give up on a bad start. A lesson for life as well as Spelunky. And the guys who created The Stanley Parable. Taking a one hour break from Spelunky to play the existential mouse-inna-maze put the right perspective on what I was trying to ‘achieve’. It’s utterly ridiculous but that doesn’t mean we don’t care.

I can’t believe it’s not an achievement

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It’s been a while since I stopped aiming for completion in Spelunky. It’s a bit like Proust’s À la Recherche du Temps Perdu: Someday, you tell yourself, someday I’ll do it. I’ll sit down and wrestle that son of a bitch to the ground. Until then I’ll just have a gander every now and again and enjoy it without setting my sights on anything above and beyond that. That’s for Spelunky, that is. I don’t know if there is a Proust analog. Just leafing through Swann’s Way or sniffing Sodom and Gomorrah and dreaming of the day when you’ll do it for real.

I’m getting sidetracked. Actually I just wanted to celebrate a Spelunky first, the first such in a long time. It is – as the headline hints – not an achievement but it bally well should be. I got knocked out by a stupid monkey on the altar of Kali. And she accepted my offering. What a way to go.