Things Fall Apart

Oh, god! Here we go again. Friday night and I got nothing. 

That's what happens if you spend all morning doing dailies and sorting inventory because it's about all you can manage with a small dog sleeping on your lap, then spend all afternoon watching the same small dog chewing up cardboard boxes and working herself into a frenzy over a grooming brush.

Not that I feel guilty about it. A solid run of meaty posts all week. I deserve a goof-off day. If it was only the one...

Must be something... oh, yes, what about that Twitter deal, eh? 

Do I care? Not really. You know those cars you see sometimes, parked up with grass growing around the tires? Rust all over the body, a window missing, birds nesting inside? That's my Twitter account, that is.

It's hard to imagine anything good will come of Elon Musk buying Twitter but then it's hard to imagine anything good coming from either of them separately, either. I'm not sure putting them together makes things worse.

There was going to be a paragraph here about how I don't get why Twitter even exists as a commercial entity since it doesn't make money and never has. Then I fact-checked and found that, contrary to popular opinion, it has been turning a small profit of late.

That about sums up how much I either know or care about Twitter. Let's have a picture of one of those cars I just described so we can all imagine my Twitter account, somewhere out there in the cyberwilds, slowly falling to digital bits.

That screenshot comes from the point and click adventure game I seem to have been playing for most of my natural life, Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis. The link goes to the game's Steam page and if I'd been playing it on Steam I'd be able to quantify just how many hours I've put in. It would be a lot.

I didn't buy SF2:PC on Steam, though. I got it free from Amazon, I can't exactly remember how long ago. I know I started playing it on January 6 and I'm still playing. Not every day and usually only for about an hour, although I've had a few longer sessions. It's the game I wind down on at the end of the evening before I go to bed, or one of them, anyway.

I have fifteen Save files, so at a conservative estimate I have probably played for about twenty hours over four months. Hard to be sure. The game just seems to meander, thematically and geographically, which makes it feel like it's going nowhere and never going to get there. I've been on a cruise ship in the North Sea, a ruined temple in the Indonesian jungle and now I'm putzing around a cemetery in Paris. 

The plot makes little sense, the voice acting is iffy, the writing is labored, the translation uncertain, the puzzles often obtuse. Sometimes there's even an embarassingly self-conscious, fourth-wall breaking, nod-and-wink meta-joke. And yet I enjoy it a lot, probably because it reminds me of Broken Sword as performed by an earnest tribute band.

Speaking of Broken Sword and tribute bands, I read an article at Gamesindustry.biz this week by Šarūnas and Žilvinas Ledas, the brothers behind Crowns and Pawns: Kingdom of Deceit, a p&c adventure whose demo I played and wrote about a couple of months ago. 

The piece is part of a series called "Why I Love" and it does a good job of explaining the singular attraction of the Broken Sword series. The part where they talk about playing the second game "not exactly together" really took me back.  "We would play in turns, and it became a competition about who would solve a puzzle first. But during the off-screen time we would actually collaborate in figuring out how to move forward."

That's pretty much how Mrs. Bhagpuss and I played the first two Broken Sword games. We only had one computer at the time and one or other of us would play while the other sat and watched and made "helpful" suggestions. We'd get stuck and spend ages trying things, then one of us would be thinking about the problem at work the next day and we'd come back and tell each other and try it and... it wouldn't work and we'd go round again and on like that. We finished both games in the end and with no walkthroughs. It's a lot easier and more fun with two.

I wasn't very complimentary about the Crowns and Pawns demo, calling it "bland" and "a bit like adventure gaming by numbers." I feel a bit warmer towards it now I've read what motivated the brothers to write and produce it. I've added it to my Steam wishlist, something I didn't do after playing the demo, which just goes to show there's more than one way to promote a game.

A couple of musical items to finish with, I think. I had a nice surprise today when the third Let's Eat Grandma CD dropped through the letterbox, frightening the puppy, who ran into the kitchen and hid in her barrel. 

There have been four singles released from the album so far and I'm pretty sure I've featured all of them here. I seem to have fallen into a pattern of talking about every new release by a small, select group of bands (Band of groups?). I quite like doing it so I don't see why I should stop. 

Since there isn't anything new from the album to show you, how about the album itself? I have never really understood the attraction of unboxing videos but that's not going to stop me from using this one to fill up some space. It's the vinyl album that's being unboxed (Should be Unsleeved, surely?). I got the CD because CDs are better than vinyl in every conceivable way. Same cover though.

While we're on the subject, Superorganism dropped a second single from their upcoming album this week. I have that on pre-order too (The album, not the single.) but it's not out until mid-July. 

The song goes by the incredibly annoying name of crushed.zip. The first time I downloaded it my PC apparently believed it really was a .zip file and put it in an appropriate folder. I had to download it again and rename it with a space where the dot is to get it to behave.

On first listen I thought the track was a bit meh but it's a real grower, especially when the big ending kicks in. Looking forward to the album.

And that, I think, is about that for today. Tomorrow I'm on dog duty all day, while Mrs. Bhagpuss is out at work and we've got a puppy gate coming. (Really a baby gate but don't tell her. Beryl, that is, not Mrs Bhagpuss. She already knows - she paid for it. Mrs Bhagpuss that is, not Beryl.) I have to fit it at the top of the stairs to stop her tumbling ears over tail all the way down (The puppy, that is, not... oh, you're ahead of me...). 

With all of that, chances are tomorrow's post could be thin. Sunday I'm working, so then too. Fun, blogging, isn't it? There's a new month's worth of free games from Amazon on Sunday, at least. That'll probably be worth a post, although I guess I probably ought to finish the one I'm playing before I start another.

Monsieur Bezos! With These Free Games You Are Really Spoiling Us!

Pinch, punch, first of the month. Free games from Amazon. Oh, Jeff, have you not blessed us enough already with your wondrous New World? I wonder if he plays? Or even knows the game exists as anything other than a footnote in his gigantic ledger of All The Money?

Speaking of Mr Bezos, I saw several news stories about him and the game today or, rather, the same story several times. A number of news outlets seemed intrigued, even outraged, that Amazon devs had thought to block the uber-boss's name and various versions of it at Character Creation. 

Clearly those people have never played an mmorpg before or they'd know almost all of them have a No Famous Names clause somewhere in the EULA. Amazon have just taken the trouble to enforce it pro-actively. I wish they all would.

Of course, to be any use, that kind of lockout actually has to work. It would have made for a better story if any of the items had included a screenshot of the guy I saw on launch day running around Monarch's Bluff on Zuvendis with the nameplate Jez Befos. Or maybe it was Bef Jezos. Something like that. Close enough I knew what he meant, anyway. This would be a better anecdote if I'd taken a screenshot, too...

The free games that come with Amazon Prime vary in interest for me month by month but last month's's pick was pretty sweet. I claimed several, downloaded three and actually played two of them. 

One was Unmemory, which I posted about a couple of weeks back. The other two were both part of something called the Secret Files. The first has the subtitle Tunguska. You can probably guess what that's about. And you'd be right. The second is called Puritas Cordis, which meant absolutely nothing to me, even though I did Latin at school. I googled it and it means something like "Pure of Heart". 

 

Still none the wiser but there's a guy in the cover picture who looks like Indiana Jones so I'm guessing that's a clue. In case I'd forgotten what Indy looked like (I hadn't.) there he is, the real one, staring at me from the cover of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, which was also in September's selection, along with The Secret of Monkey Island and Sam and Max Hit the Road. Not a bad trio, that.

Nothing to do with Amazon but on a related note, last week I also grabbed a couple of free games from Steam: Syberia 1 and 2. Two more point and click adventures. I think I have enough for the whole winter now, should we get snowed in. Or locked down. Bound to be one or the other.

I love point and click adventures but they do take up a lot of time. I'm still playing Tunguska. It's really long. I was expecting to have finished it and posted about it by now but it's just going on and on and on. 

I'm enjoying it well enough even though both the voice acting and the translation (from the original German) are a little awkward. The plot and the puzzles are engaging enough to make up for it and the graphics are lovely. The elevator pitch must have been "You know that Broken Sword series? We thought we'd do it again only with Germans. Since, you know, we are German and all." Apart from the German thing, that puts it right in my wheelhouse (Ah, wheelhouse! Just the sort of location you get in one of these games!)

There seem to be at least three in the Secret Files series, the two I took last month and a third that arrived in the October bundle. This one doesn't seem to have a subtitle and the description tells me absolutely nothing other than it appears to continue the story from Tunguska. You mean it's three games long?! We'll be here 'til Easter! 

And when am I going to find time to play the four Wallace and Gromit games I just claimed? Oh, right, did I not mention those? Four more point and click adventures, although "graphic" ones this time. I assume that means clicking on pictures rather than Wallace with his kit off. I hope so, anyway. Oh, and Batman: the Enemy Within. I got that last month, too. 

That's a whole lot of free adventures. It would be great if I had nothing better to do but I have New World, now, don't I? A new mmorpg trumps a new point and click adventure any day. 

Well, maybe not any day. I also just snatched a free Steam key from MassivelyOP for Gloria Victis but I don't think I'll be playing that before I finish Tunguska. Or the sequels, most likely. I mean, I've been aware of Gloria Victis for years but I've never felt the need to find out anything about it, much less play it.

That's the power of free,though,  isn't it? I'll take things for nothing even when I don't really have any immediate use for them. I do at least limit myself to things I might have a use for some day. There are  plenty  more free games on Prime and Steam I could have claimed but didn't. I do have some standards. They might be low but they're there.

It's not just whole games, either. It's bits of games. Or bits for games. 

Free with Prime come any number of in-game freebies for all kinds of games I don't play and never will. I say "any number" but I can tell you exactly how many it is this month, if you want.  It's forty-one. That's forty games Amazon doesn't make or, for the most part, sell and one they do. Very public-spirited of them until you remember they also own Twitch so, presumably, any game that people watch makes Amazon money somehow.

Of those forty-one titles, the one Amazon makes is, of course, New World, because that's currently the only game Amazon makes. They used to make two others but they both closed down. If they ever gave anything away for those I missed it, just like I missed the games. 

I did take this month's freebie for Guild Wars 2. GW2 was only recently added to the Prime giveaway stable. I've already missed one of the free things. It was a good one, too. Well, not good but I might have used it, which is more than I can say about most of the things ArenaNet give away in the game itself.

I did get the Booster Pack and Mini Pet freebie and today I got the latest one, a pack of dyes. I logged in to claim that, just to be sure. Dyes are always worth having. 

The freebie I missed was an "Ascended Aurene Clothing Outfit", basically a T-shirt and shorts. I can't say it's amazing but I would have liked to have had it all the same. I like contemporary casual wear in mmorpgs. I think the best clothing options I ever saw were the street fashions in The Secret World.

So much free stuff, eh? Stargrace posted a couple of days back about all the stuff she's been given in Black Desert Online. She said "Like a lot of gamers, I love loot boxes, I love free things" and so do I. When the free things are entire games, though, and I've already got games I just paid to play, I do wonder sometimes just where it's all going.

It's just as well I'm semi-retired. I'd hate to think how I'd have coped if companies had been throwing stuff at me like this back when I worked full-time.