Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=1705https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5844Super Columbine Massacre RPG begins with the Columbine shooters gearing up for the attack. The art is a mix of pixel art after the style of 32-bit Final Fantasy games and digitized photographs. The latter are most often found in item descriptions and dialog boxes, but are also utilized as backgrounds in some areas. The game is also notable for its MIDI covers of angsty 90s music. The game follows most of the known events leading up to the attack, such as the shooters leaving a recorded message. It also places a number of artifacts related to the two about the levels, such as a Marilyn Manson CD and a copy of Doom. The related dialog makes some value judgements based on the items, such as Marilyn Manson not inspiring them to do violence (and the shooters musing over the possible backlash after the attack). While some of this is based to a certain extent on evidence collected after the attacks, much seems to have been left to the imagination of the developer as to what the pair were thinking and saying before the massacre. After arming themselves with bombs and guns, the game shifts to the school. The player is given a "stealth" type mission to plant bombs in the cafeteria without being caught by cameras or hall monitors. Although the task isn't particularly difficult the objective is somewhat unclear and the completion criteria aren't entirely obvious, which led me to fail this portion of the game numerous times, sometimes setting only one bomb and other times stumbling around lunch tables looking for the "correct" ones. After setting the bombs, there is a brief scene of the two shooters contemplating the corruption of society before they return to the school armed with various weapons. The player then begins killing students in the parking lot, sparing those who they considered to have been kind to them in the past.Mon, 24 Mar 2014 18:08:10 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5844&iddiary=10209https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5790The first mission this time involved going to the drive through to get some fried chicken. I apparently went to the wrong chicken place, however, so I had to check my map again and find the one they wanted to go to. While eating, we spotted a purple gang car getting ready to do a drive by on green gang street. I chased it down so that the other guys in my car could shoot at it, after which it burst into flames and exploded. The one survivor was quickly gunned down as he fled the burning car. Strangely, a number of cops drove past us during the gun battle, but didn't seem to care. After our high-speed chase, we decided that we needed to get some more guns. Apparently I've become the designated driver, as no one bothered making an excuse to why I'm driving other people's cars this time. The gun dealer gave me a pistol, followed by a short shooting tutorial, though I didn't seem to pay for the gun at all. During these missions, I also found the gym and the clothing store, so I spent some time riding exercise bikes and lifting weights. Apparently, I now have zero fat and slightly more muscle than I did before. I also have a fancy green shirt so I can fit in with the rest of my gang friends.Wed, 29 Jan 2014 09:50:23 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5790&iddiary=10143https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5790Starting where I left off, I went next door to my neighbor's house, who took me to go tag over the graffiti from the rival purple gang down the road. At one point, I came across some guys in purple, and the hint in the corner of the screen suggested that I spray him in the face. This seemed fairly effective, though it got the attention of a cop, so I ran around the block until I lost him. I then headed back to try and tag the wall again, finding the same two guys I had sprayed before. I kept spraying them until one of them fell over in a pool of blood. Apparently I sprayed him to death. This got the attention of the police again, so I started running around the block once again. Eventually, the chase ended, and I was left to spray the wall in peace. The next mission saw some of my fellow green gang members complaining that everyone in the neighborhood was too busy doing crack to do any proper gang-banging. Even "Bear," a very large former-friend of ours, had apparently been forced into subservience by crack dealers. The gang's solution was to clean up the hood by beating up the dealers and cutting off the supply. After taking out one dealer on the street, we traced him back to the crack den where he was operating. Perhaps not surprisingly, the crack den was full of the nefarious purple gang, who were responsible for all the crack in the neighborhood. We beat them all up and went back home, secure in our knowledge that there would be significantly less crack on the green gang's street.Tue, 28 Jan 2014 20:28:33 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5790&iddiary=10142https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5790Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas starts with a rather lengthy cutscene, during which the player character, CJ, gets harassed by the police on the way to his mother's funeral. They take his money, joke about framing him for killing a cop, then dump him in a bad part of town. When I first was able to control the character, my first task was to steal a bike to ride home. I was apparently quite good at riding a bike, because I seemed to be able to ride ridiculously fast. This was fortunate, because after meeting my former friends at my mother's grave, a rival gang shot up our car and we were forced to steal bikes again. I kept accidentally dismounting my bike or crashing into poles, which resulted in the thugs chasing us in their car shooting me about a dozen times. Fortunately, I found that even though they kept catching me, it was easy to make them run into things. I eventually lost the thugs and found my friends back at my house. The next mission involved trying to rob a pizza place, but for some reason, I had to get a haircut first. I gave the barber 80 bucks for an instant beard, which seemed to fulfill the mission. I then went to get some pizza while my friend tried to rob the place. I don't know if I actually got to eat it before the cashier pulled out a shotgun and started chasing us. I tried to drive us home, but ended up driving the car off an overpass while trying to follow the map, which fortunately had very few consequences.Mon, 27 Jan 2014 23:51:10 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5790&iddiary=10141https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5783Once again, I started off with just my tears as weapons. The first item I found was "The Anarchist's Cookbook," which placed a large number of bombs about the room. Unfortunately, this tended to hit me a lot more than any of the enemies, so I didn't use it much. On the second level, I encountered a room marked "Arcade" which was locked. Unfortunately, I was once again lacking in the one thing I needed, with plenty of hearts and bombs, but no keys. After searching the level more thoroughly, I found a single key, but also an item room that was also locked. Despite my lack of weapons, I decided to go for the arcade room to see what it offered. Inside the arcade was a slot machine, a machine for selling your blood for pennies, and a boy playing a shell game. Fortunately, I had a decent amount of money already, though with extra hearts still strewn about the level, I sold my blood until the machine broke. In the end, despite all the money I blew at the arcade, I didn't get anything especially interesting, except a bag of blood from the broken machine. I did have a lot of bombs and keys, though, which I hoped would pay off. Unfortunately, lots of keys are no replacement for a good weapon. I made it about as far as I did the time before, but was backed into a corner and died. Once again, I was quite deformed by that time, with blood (from the blood bag) streaming down my face and a coat hanger (for no apparent reason) sticking out of my scalp. It seems to be difficult to make any progress in the game without becoming almost as grotesque as the monsters you fight.Sun, 19 Jan 2014 18:01:46 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5783&iddiary=10130https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5776Since I finished all my assignments last time, I went back to the Uplink server to get some more missions. I found another "destroy data" mission that got me some more cash, though it also changed my Neuromancer rating from neutral to agressive. My next mission was to fabricate some academic credentials for a programmer, which brought my rating back to neutral. Although there were a number of other missions to destroy data or to revoke people's college degrees, I decided to try focusing on more fake degrees to see if I could push my rating in the other direction. After completing all the academic hacking missions that were available, I sped up time for a while to try and get some more. During this time, my exploits showed up on the news feed as a "malicious hacker" who broke into the international academic database. There was also an article about another hacker who was breaking the silence around a mysterious and supposedly unethical company that he had been doing work for. I used my new cash to buy some new hacking software, but I couldn't quite get together the funds to get everything I wanted. Additionally, some of the software had multiple versions, so I really wanted to get the highest version I could so that my investment wasn't wasted in the long run. However, the expensive versions were far beyond my price range, which meant that I would have to wait a long time for some more jobs, especially if I was being picky about which ones I was willing to perform.Sat, 18 Jan 2014 13:00:47 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5776&iddiary=10129https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5783I decided to take another crack at The Binding of Isaac, hoping that I would have a better idea of what I was doing. This time, however, my first item wasn't "technology," but the "wiggleworm," which simply made my tears wobble back and forth as I shot them. I actually think that this made it slightly harder to aim, making the first few levels far more difficult than they were the first time. Whereas I was leaving extra hearts all over the place during my first run, I was hovering on the edge of death most of the game this time. The only thing that saved me this time was a "1UP" mushroom that I found after defeating a miniboss, which gave me the confidence to take a few more risks than I had been taking most of the game. Around the fourth level, I once again ran across "technology," which combined with my previously useless wiggleworm shot out a lovely sine-wave laser blast that hit everything in my path. Unfortunately, by that time I had already used my mushroom and was on the edge of death again. A few rooms later, an unlucky hop by a headless body killed me before I could build up my health again.Sat, 18 Jan 2014 11:41:02 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5783&iddiary=10128https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5783I began the game in the basement, fighting the zombie-like remains of other children with nothing but my tears. Fortunately, the first item I found, which was simply labeled "technology," was some kind of cybernetic eyepiece that allowed me to shoot lasers. This was considerably more effective than both my tears and the most enemy projectiles. It also enabled me to clear out the basement, as well as defeat several bosses, with considerable ease. After the third boss, I encountered a room with a Baphomet-like creature sitting in the middle. It had two groups items floating in front of it, two red hearts and three grey hearts. Since grey hearts seemed to give a temporary, rather than a permanent health boost, I decided to take the red ones. Doing so turned my skin black and seemed to give me the temporary grey hearts anyway. I continued down several levels, collecting random items such as shoes, coat hangers, as well as tarot cards. I tried using the first card I got, which didn't seem to do anything, but the use of a later card transported me to a room full of money, which was kind of nice, since I had only managed to accumulate four cents in five levels. Unfortunately, as soon as I left this room, I was attacked by several disembodied brains that ganged up and killed me, never giving me the chance to use my new found wealth.Fri, 17 Jan 2014 23:39:53 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5783&iddiary=10127https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5776I picked up where I left off last time, going through the missions I had already signed up for. It was fairly monotonous, but not too bad. Since I had so many jobs, many of them called for hacking the same company, which saved me a bit of time, since for many of them, since I had effectively erased my tracks, I still had the administrator password for some of the servers I went back to. I suppose if I had been better organized, I could have copied and deleted all the files from a single server in one trip, but the game interface doesn't particularly lend itself to that kind of organization. You're probably not supposed to sign up for twelve jobs at once, anyway. The only hitch I had was that in trying to go back to a server that I had already visited (which the game had removed from my map), I accidentally made a direct connection, which got me in some trouble. Fortunately, nothing happened (except getting my password revoked), but since getting caught essentially ends your game and makes you start over, clicking the wrong thing is pretty bad. At the end of the missions, I had advanced to rank two and managed to save up enough money to buy a fancy new processor. I was doing pretty well with the super slow one, so hopefully a fast processor will mean that these easy jobs will go much faster.Tue, 14 Jan 2014 13:47:26 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5776&iddiary=10123https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5775I decided to give the Grand Prince of Kiev another shot. Once again, I tried to change my succession laws to keep my empire together, but I noticed that my vassals were much more unhappy with me. While the rulers, borders and such are always the same when you start a new game, apparently the personal characteristics of the leaders are randomly generated each time. I decided to start over a few times until I happened to roll a prince with decent traits that everyone liked. I changed the succession laws and hoped that I could stave off any invasions from my kinsmen. Perhaps because of my characters winning personality, no one tried to invade me. Rather, everyone kept inviting me to participate in their wars. It seemed to go pretty well, and I won the wars for once. However, I never really profited from them. I tried to fabricate some claims so I could keep some of the territory, but it didn't work. I guess I had to be the one declaring the war or something. During one of my campaigns, this time helping my son-in-law, the Byzantine Emperor, my heir died of an illness back home. I was over fifty and my new heir, my grandson, was just six months old. Since I had given my son his own county, my new heir was now out of my control, and I had no ability to do much to help him. I just hoped I could survive until he became of age. In the end, he grew up and assassinated me at age 69, taking over the kingdom. All three games technically lasted about the same number of years, but it is interesting to see the differences in how they played out. While my own actions in game certainly had consequences, in the grand scheme of things, I didn't seem to be able to do much to change the course of history. I still don't think I quite have the hang of this game.Tue, 14 Jan 2014 00:03:22 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=5775&iddiary=10122