Cheerful Ghost: An Awesome Community For Gamers

Crawl: An Upcoming Multiplayer Dungeon Crawler

After hearing that Crawl hit Steam Greenlight today I decided to watch the trailer. The Indie scene is packed with current and upcoming pixel based hack-n-slashes but the Crawl trailer really got me interested. Crawl seems to focus on multiplayer and part of that is you taking your turn being the bad guy. Looks like you can use whatever is at your disposal to take down the "good guy" and then after you kill them take your turn as the good guy while everyone else tries to kill you. Seems like a really unique take on some FPS modes like "Last Man Standing" or "Mutant."

Take a minute to watch the trailer and if you like what you see, give it an upvote on Greenlight.

... Read All

Escape Goat 2 Beta: Puzzle Based Platforming Done Right

I am pretty excited to be part of the Escape Goat 2 beta. If you haven't played the original Escape Goat, I recommend you head to Steam and check it out. I have only played the first few levels of Escape Goat 2 and so far it already exceeds my expectations for a sequel. I really liked the pixel art quality of the original but find the hand drawn nature of Escape Goat 2 to be more to my liking. In fact, every element of Escape Goat 2 seems way more polished from the original. The play control, levels and game pacing all seem to be much tighter this time around.

If you are curious how the new game looks and plays, I made a quick video above showing off the first few... Read All

Twitch Plays Pokémon has beaten the game

If you haven't heard of Twitch Plays Pokémon, here's a brief synopsis: The people behind the channel set up a bot that would pass commands entered in the chat window to an emulator running the original Pokémon.

Of course, with anything like this, trolls were rampant. But the Borg collective of Twitch users playing the game managed to get through all the trolls throwing them off ledges and worked together to beat the game. It took about 16.5 days but they did it.

A message on the stream says that a new adventure will be starting in 19 hours as of this post, so we haven't seen the last of them. I wonder how far they'll take it? I'd love to see it keep going through all... Read All

Learn fission vs. fusion with GLaDOS

NASA got Ellen McLain to voice a supercomputer in this educational video. It does a fantastic job of explaining just what these concepts mean, while also staying true to character.

I mean it's corny, yeah, but it's fun.

Prison Architect Alpha 18: Reform Programs & Tazers

"It’s been another massive month, with several major successes. This month we tackled one of our big end game features : prisoner reform. You can now run prisoner reform programs which aim to train, educate and reform your inmates. Reform programs are expensive to run, take a long time to complete, and the success rates are often very low unless your prisoners are very well taken care of. Some bring substantial benefits to your prison and the inmates that take part, others are a longer term investment in your prisoners that may provide little short term benefit.

We have continued to expand the armoury originally introduced in alpha 17. You can now unlock tazers for... Read All

Game/Show: What Makes NPC's Great?

"NPCs (non-playable characters) are a massively important part of the gaming experience, so we thought we'd show our love and appreciation. Though they're fictional computer-generated characters, we often develop real feelings for these beings. Sure, they serve functional roles, guiding you through the game. But their presence and personality can allow us to form strong bonds and real emotions, leading us to truly care about their wellbeing. So which NPCs are our favorites?"

What NPC's have stuck with you over time?

Nintendo to Drop Wii & DS Online Game Support May 20th

Nintendo will be shuttering online play for its Wii and DS games on May 20th. They are keeping online game support for the Wii U and 3DS however. Whereas I wasn't a huge consumer of the Wii online play, I did use it and find it say they are shuttering it.

Nintendo generally does right by its customers, but this is a bit disappointing. I understand it's impossible to keep a service going forever but in the face of companies like Blizzard still providing Battle.net support for Starcraft, one wonders why everyone can't do the same thing.

There are rumblings that Nintendo farmed out the online functionality to Gamespy and that this has to due with a recent acquisition of... Read All

Angvik - Small Scale in a Big Space

Angvik is a platform action game set in a joyful but unforgiving land. The castle has been taken over by a barbarian and no one else has the courage to confront him, so take up your father’s gear and set off on a wondrous journey! And you’re not alone: you’ll find many birds and items to aid you along the way, and you’ll encounter all sorts of creatures to fight as well. But watch your step! You have only one life, so if you die, you stay dead.

I really enjoyed stepping into Angvik, as small of a game it is. A peaceful, fantasy, perma-death platformer, set to an idyllic score. Make your way through 5 levels, picking up loot from chests and fallen foes, with a few... Read All

Book Review: Ready Player One

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Take The Matrix in one hand. In your second hand take Second Life. In your third hand take World of Warcraft.

Now mash them all together. Oh, and mix in some ALF.

This is the world of Ready Player One.

It’s 2044, and Earth has become practically inhospitable, but people don’t seem to mind because they all live in OASIS (Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory-Immersive Simulation), a free-to-play massively multiplayer online simulation game created by James Halliday. James Halliday suddenly dies, but has left a will stating that whomever can find his Easter Egg in OASIS will inherit his wealth ($240 billion) and control of OASIS.

The book’s main character is Wade Watts,... Read All Take The Matrix in one hand. In your second hand take Second Life. In your third hand take World of Warcraft.

Now mash them all together. Oh, and mix in some ALF.

This is the world of Ready Player One.

It’s 2044, and Earth has become practically inhospitable, but people don’t seem to mind because they all live in OASIS (Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory-Immersive Simulation), a free-to-play massively multiplayer online simulation game created by James Halliday. James Halliday suddenly dies, but has left a will stating that whomever can find his Easter Egg in OASIS will inherit his wealth ($240 billion) and control of OASIS.

The book’s main character is Wade Watts, known as Parzival in the game. He is one of many egg hunters, or “gunters” dedicated to finding the egg. James Halliday was obsessed with the 1980’s, so OASIS is full of 80’s pop references, and the gunters spend their time pouring over everything from the 80’s, from arcade games to movies to television to music and more. The more 80’s trivia you know, the more impressive you are. Parzivial is a low level gunter (in OASIS, you can travel anywhere, for a price, and most gunters, when they’re not studying the 80’s they’re leveling up their avatars through quests), but one obsessed with Halliday and the 80’s. He and his only friend Aech (pronounced “H”) spend all their free time playing arcade games and watching movies together, in hopes of finding clues to the location of Halliday’s egg.

Racing against the gunters is the corporation IOI (Innovative Online Industries), who want to monetize OASIS, charging for access, and for advertising space (on any and everything). The gunters are not only trying to locate the egg for wealth, but to continue the vision of Halliday, and despise anyone that works for IOI.

Now for my review

First, I will say that this book was fun to read. Entertaining and pretty quickly paced, I read this in a short amount of time. I do recommend it to anyone that 1) loves the 80’s, 2) loves virtual worlds, or 3) loves puzzles. Not that there’s really any puzzle solving for the reader. There’s no way to read a clue and actually figure something out before someone in the book does. But, it’s still fun to watch the characters explore. The action can be fun, as in a virtual world, any type of weapon can be created, from guns to magic spells and more.

A couple of times there’s some references that take me out of the story, like when someone mentions Wikipedia. I suppose that website might still be around in another 30 years, but I would have assumed something better would have come around. It just felt strange hearing a few terms that are used currently.

It’s not a very deep book. You can tell where things are going for the most part. There’s a few twists that are fun to find out, but for the most part it’s pretty heavy handed when it comes to things like “This will be Wade’s love interest.”

Overall, think of this book like an action movie. It’s fun to let yourself be drawn in and watch, but don’t expect too much in the way of a compelling story or wonderful acting.

Out of 17, I give this book an 11.

AdamPFarnsworth Post Author wrote on 02/27/2014 at 10:30pm

To show the amount of 80's this book contains, here's every movie mentioned in the book :)

http://letterboxd.com/bbbgtoby/list/every-movie-referenced-in-ready-player-one/

scrypt Supporter wrote on 02/27/2014 at 10:42pm

Love this book, and highly recommend. Waves of nostalgia for children of the 80's, and the Willy Wonka/Matrix association is dead on. This book is pure tribute to what made that decade a great time to be a very nerdy kid ;).

gaidalcain85 wrote on 03/03/2014 at 03:37am

This is an amazing book, a must read for any gamer, especially for children of the 80's :D

AdamPFarnsworth Post Author wrote on 04/02/2018 at 08:00pm

Quick movie review. It was ok. I saw it in IMAX 3D, so the visuals were a lot of fun, but the story was a little worse than the book (and the book story wasn't the greatest to begin with). It does really look great, but I probably won't bother seeing it again, unless it's free on demand or netflix and I'm bored.

A funny point that relates to my original post about the book. In the book, when they mention Wikipedia, it took me out of the story, and similarly, in the movie, someone mentions Twitch, and I had the same immersion-breaking thought "why is Twitch still around 30 years in the future?"

Oh, also T.J. Miller voices an avatar in this, and that totally took me out of the movie each time. Instead of buying his character, in my mind's eye, I could only see him in a voice booth, reading his lines. I think that was a poor voice acting choice.

AdamPFarnsworth Post Author wrote on 04/02/2018 at 08:01pm

Using the new Cheerful Ghost game rating scale, I give the book a Rad and the movie a Meh unfortunately.

jdodson Admin wrote on 04/02/2018 at 11:21pm

This movie seems up my alley, in fact someone at work asked me if I saw it. Strangely enough i've thought the trailers have looked like a movie i'm in no way interested in seeing. The trailers make this movie seem like NOSTALGIA THE MOVIE and i'm just not really in to that. I'm going to start reading reviews for it now, but it's not something i'm actively making my way to watch.

Curious why you thought it was meh? Uninteresting characters? Was it a generic story?

AdamPFarnsworth Post Author wrote on 04/02/2018 at 11:45pm

The story is fairly generic: poor kid saves the world and finds love, but that was in the book, so I can give that a pass. Basically, the book has a lot more narration, and you understand the "why" more so than the movie. The movie doesn't seem to give you a good reason why the OASIS needs to be saved. Obviously, the big, bad corporation having control is obviously bad, but the book spends more time building the world and how the OASIS is "the world" to most people. Kids go to school in it, every works in it, there isn't much of a "real world" anymore. The main character lives in some futuristic slums, so it makes sense that he'd want to escape, but you don't get a sense of how the rest of the world looks/works. The movie looks amazing, but just isn't much more than a CGI reference extravaganza.

I'd call the movie REFERENCE THE MOVIE and the book NOSTALGIA THE BOOK. The book seems to care about the references more. Maybe it's easier as the nostalgia in the book is just from the 80's, and the author loves the 80's, whereas the movie has references from the 80's, 90's and 2000's, and they're just there.

Also, another gripe I have with the movie is the "B roll" type shots of people using VR. The main character has an omnidirectional treadmill, so he can run in any direction and not move in actual space, but so many times you see random shots of people running around the real world streets, with their headsets on, but fighting in OASIS. They should have been running into each other and buildings, but somehow they're just able to avoid everything. Also, there's some scenes where a lot of people die in OASIS (you can see some big battle scenes in the trailers), and you see people in the real world being kicked out of OASIS in the same pattern people died in OASIS. For instance, in a big battle scene, someone shoots a laser and kills a line of people. The movie then cuts to a line of people in the real world having to take their headsets off. But that's not how the OASIS works... they've been running around, battling, there's no relation to their real world presence and their presence in the game.

So, between a generic story and too many points that broke the movie magic for me, I can only give it a meh. It's beautiful, and fun at times, but the book is much better (and it has it's flaws already).

jdodson Admin wrote on 04/04/2018 at 03:31am

Thanks Adam. That really helps me understand it better.

Travis Admin wrote on 04/15/2018 at 02:36am

Katie and I just got back from it. She's read it, I haven't. She liked it more than I did but I'd still give it a Rad, though maybe not a high rad.

It was a daunting task to make the film, and you can tell Spielberg loved it (though he rates it one of his hardest films ever). The cast was fantastic except for, unfortunately, the lead. A lot of the narrative is told through voiceover and those segments just didn't land for me. The ending was incredibly saccharine and heavily changed from the book apparently. Katie explained the book's ending to me and it sounds much stronger.

I think the problems come from the compressed story, as is frequently the case with adaptations. They didn't have enough time to explore things as they needed to.

But it was a LOT of fun. I cared about the story even if it was the typical plucky band of heroes vs. the evil corporation plot. That plot comes back up so often because it works, I guess. I DO greatly wish that it hadn't relied so much on voiceover.

The action was fun and very well done and the animation felt accurate for the interface players use. Not perfect, not an uncanny valley, a lot of goofy stuff mixed with realistic stuff. The kind of hodge podge you'd expect from something with user-created content. It really sold itself as a futuristic VR game/world.

Ultimately Adam I think I agree with almost all your criticisms and have some that you didn't mention but it didn't pull it down as much for me. Mostly it made me want to read the book and to see an extended edition with an alternate ending.

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Huge Diablo III Loot 2.0 Update Dropped Today

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If you have Diablo III I seriously recommend you check out the update Blizzard dropped today. Diablo III 2.0.1 adds the new Loot 2.0 system, difficulty system, cursed events, class updates, monster and boss updates, crafting updates, paragon 2.0, pools of reflection & clans and communities.

In fact you should join the Diablo III: Cheerful Ghost clan too. Do a clan search for "Cheerful Ghost" and when I join the game next, i'll add you.

The update took a while as Diablo III had to move a few files around and download over 8 gigs of updates. After the process was over I loaded the game to an entirely new screen and was presented with a very different set of game... Read All

Travis Admin wrote on 02/27/2014 at 06:59pm

The loot is top notch. That's the obvious thing to note, but it's very true.

I definitely welcome the simplified crafting and potions. My inventory thanks Blizzard for that.

Speaking of, I hear we're getting a new tab in the stash with RoS!

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 02/27/2014 at 09:31pm

A new tab? Interesting. I never maxed out the current chest myself and want to ditch what I have now because its just more fun to earn it on your character anyway.

I think I have a few browns though, maybe i'll keep those.

hardeyez wrote on 03/02/2014 at 02:15am

Ok, now I've played this for a couple hours. It's a lot improved. WIthin the first hour of playing I had replaced 6 pieces of equipment... That used to take hours for each piece. Then in the next hour of playing I got a very useful legendary... So I'm enjoying it again. I also moved up a full level (I'm currently only 55 on my main character, never got to 60 as hell mode was so punishing, I was barely able to keep my gear repaired most of the time).

The new difficulties are wild. I started off at "Master" as I was playing in hell before, but it was just a smackdown with my crappy equipment, so I dropped down to "Expert" which was better, still very hard, but I was progressing that is until I hit some elite packs which were impossible. So I them went down to "Hard" and that is playable until I gear up better. I can work at elite packs and get good drops and progress.

It's been fun enough, that I might now buy Reaper of Souls...

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 03/02/2014 at 05:49pm

Yeah, Reaper is looking better after this patch for sure. If you are thinking of getting it, join the event.

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/events/49

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