With haunted hearts through the heat and cold we never thought we could ever get old

Dungeons and Dragons Online is 20 years old. 20! That's mad. I'd briefly played at launch and burned out even before starting to blog, then went back a few years later when it went free to play (if I can believe myself), as did Melmoth (probably; with the various blog migrations I lost the author details on individual posts, and while I can usually tell us apart occasionally I'm not sure if I'm me or him). That means I missed what would have been the 20th anniversary of City of Heroes (Alas, poor CoH! I knew him, Statesman: an MMO of infinite skuls) and World of Warcraft (I've obviously successfully unsubscribed from any of its marketing literature and any last vestiges of MMO blogs, social media, or what-not). DDO hasn't been irritating enough to unsubscribe from, evidently, so when the newsletter turned up with the promise of a new archetype for free and assorted other anniversary celebrations, I thought I'd get it patched up and have a look.

Blimey. I mean, fair play for still going, but it took some getting used to - never mind character abilities being like a 747 cockpit (that definitely was Melmoth, one of his classics) (also, apologies for the lack of media since migration, but I'm sure you get the idea) pretty much everything about the the game, the interface, the control mapping was a struggle to remember. "You can speak to an NPC called “Giver of Gifts”, located on Anniversary Island, which is accessible by speaking to the NPC Fred in either House Jorasco or House Phiarlan near the location of the 10th Anniversary Event" says the news page. Well, triffic, if I had the first clue where the 10th Anniversary Event was, or what a House Jorasco might be, that might be useful...

I did find him, in the end. After rolling a new character on a new server, heaven knows where I'd left the last one 15 years ago. And then logged out again. Not sure I'll be back in a hurry. Maybe for the 30th anniversary! If both me and the game are still going then...

 

The pit full of emptiness and wrath

I do like a good roguelike game. Or more usually a roguelikelike, maybe a roguelikelikelike, or even a roguelikelikelikelike. Rogue was great but a bit dated now. Probably. I haven't played it since 1988 when I had it on a 5.25" floppy disc for the Amstrad PC1512.

OK, that was true, but even as I typed it I got curious and went off to archive.org for a quick dungeon bash (matron). It's strange what sticks with you, I instinctively mashed 'S' when I reached a dead end in a corridor, and sure enough there was a secret door there. Then I got killed by a rattlesnake. Did I want my possessions identified? 

Anyway, that confirmed the while Rogue was indeed most impressive in the 1980s and eminently playable now, there are better options out there now. Like Vienetta. By which I mean Vienetta was impressive in the 1980s, not that it's a better option than Rogue now. Though there are strong arguments for the latter as well. Anyone else have a craving for several rippled layers of ice cream?

So. As you've no doubt surmised from that fact that I'm talking about Vienetta, I bought Ball x Pit over the Christmas holidays. It's a lot of fun. There we go, I know everyone's been on tenterhooks for my enormously in-depth review.

What really kicked this all off was the fact that Ball x Pit is often tagged as a roguelike. As the opening linked article shows, the debate over the definition of roguelike was well-worn even ten years ago, but as per the How Roguelike is your game? tool, Ball x Pit would be, by my assessment, Roguelikelikelikelike at best. The current definition of roguelike generally seems to be along the lines of 'keep doing sort of the same thing but gradually unlocking more stuff as you go', which is one of my favoured genres recently with games like Vampire Survivors, Balatro, Megabonk, Death Must Die, Jotunnslayer and Ball x Pit in the last year, and it's far too late to try and coin a new name for that style of game. The roguelike horse has not merely bolted but come back, built an upgraded stables, and unlocked a new class of horse by the time the stable door is shut. I still like roguelikelike, though, shame that never really caught on.   

Get Dressed You Merry Gentlemen

 

 It's December, it's 25th, that can only mean one thing: time for the Christmas Spitfire to lead us all in a rousing GEEEEEEEEETTTTT dressed you merry gentlemen.

Merry Christmas, one and all.

Reading Roundup

The most recent instalment of Stuff I've Been Reading, largely as a reminder to myself so I can flick back through posts here and say "oh, yeah, I totally forgot about that" in 7 to 12 years times...

I worked through the entire Anthony Price bibliography I started in October 2024; reading them through in publication order definitely gives a better introduction to some of the surrounding characters, but they still work fine when read in whatever order you happened to find them in. If I go for another read through in ten-odd years I might try them in the chronological order of the events in the books for a bit of fun.

In the mood for further cold war espionage I had a look around and saw some glowing reviews of Joseph Hone's The Private Sector, the first of four Peter Marlow novels. It's good, but I found it a touch squalid so I haven't moved on to the others yet. Another suggestion was Michael Gilbert's work featuring Calder and Behrens; Game Without Rules, a short story collection, has been a most enjoyable introduction so I may well try a couple more of his books.

On the non-fiction front this year's Chalke History Festival added a number of books to the to-read pile, of which I've only finished Eleanor Barraclough's Embers of the Hands so far, a wonderful history of some of the lesser known aspects of the Viking age.

Back to the fiction, and I've mostly been keeping up with Ben Aaronovitch's superb Rivers of London series (despite only mentioning it once before on the blog, unless the search function is deceiving me); there's a new novel out this year, but while waiting for the e-book price to drop slightly to what-would-have-been-paperback levels I picked up the two most recent novellas: Winter's Gifts and The Masquerades of Spring, the latter a lovely little P G Wodehouse pastiche.

Finally, with an ongoing re-play of Cyberpunk 2077 in progress, I've gone back to William Gibson's Bridge trilogy, currently halfway through Idoru. The postmillennial future of the 1990s stands up incredibly well, obviously it's not a perfect prediction but the idea of a synthetic personality certainly strikes a chord in this agentic world.

 

 

I'll harvest what the earth brings forth

I recently bought Megabonk on Steam, and I’ve been having a terrific time bonking everything in sight. And also playing Megabonk!!!1! 

Your appreciation of the staggering hilarity of that gag may well depend on whether you lived in a country where ‘bonk’ was a common euphemism for sex in the 1980s, which as far as I can gather was Britain and Australia (as opposed to the slightly later ‘boink’ variant). From my etymological investigations it seems ‘bonk’ in the ‘hit (especially on the head)’ sense is more recent than I imagined it might be, dating back to the 1930s rather than, say, being a Dickensian expression. 

Anyway! Megabonk is, essentially, a 3D version of Vampire Survivors - pick a character, collect random weapons and power-ups, face off against an ever-increasing horde of monsters. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed Vampire Survivors, heading back in frequently with updates and DLC, and Megabonk captures that same essential simplicity of concept with depth of weapon and power variations, only now with jumping! The quest and unlock system is nicely designed to promote trying out different builds and weapons, the random elements can be frustrating but immensely satisfying when everything comes together. Well worth a look, if you like that sort of thing.

Also featuring a fair bit of bonking, or at least references thereto, is Earth Must Die, a new point and click adventure from Size Five games with a fantastic voice cast featuring Joel Fry, Don Warrington, Alex Horne, Martha Howe-Douglas, Mike Wozniak, Matthew Holness, Stevie Martin, Sophie Duker and Alasdair Beckett-King, amongst others. There's a demo available which is rather fun; I haven't played an adventure game for ages, Discworld Noir might have been the last, so there's a nice blast of nostalgia. I'm not sure I'll be plunging back into a complete adventure-fest, the pace is a bit slow and I need to be in the right frame of mind, but it's good to mix things up now and again.

Nothin’ but a Panama hat and a pair of old Greek shoes

With Cyberpunk 2077 getting a recent update I've headed back to Liberty City for a third run-through, and I'm finding the enforced story beats quite a drag this time around. The first time you experience them the slow reveals build tension but when you know what's coming they're just an obstacle to getting on with the fun stuff. There should be some sort of law that any mission involving walking very slowly while a bunch of exposition happens can be skipped if you've done it before.

Still, between the occasionally tedious bits of plot there's a whole city of nice little icons to be diverted by, and that's as splendid as ever. They've added a few vehicles over the updates, so my two main hobbies are currently "driving at absolute top speed and trying to turn corners without braking at all" and "clothes shopping".

These might not seem very related, but driving at absolute top speed and trying to turn corners without braking at all tends to have unfortunate consequences for pedestrians within, let's say, half a kilometre of major intersections (and indeed diners at any establishments with large glass windows within a similar distance). The local police seem to take a dim view of vehicular homicide, so my perfectly innocent hobby inevitably results in high speed chases, during which I never brake while trying to corner; an irony not lost on the pursuing officers I suspect.

This is where the second hobby comes in, as whenever I spy a clothes shop I fling myself immediately from my vehicle into a combat roll and dash in to the store. This is primarily to check if they have any fabulous hats for sale but has the happy bonus effect of clearing my wanted rating and getting the police off my back; entirely understandable in game terms, of course.

"Despatch, this is Officer Dibble, have eyes on male human, six one, black leather jacket, denim shorts, high combat boots, and fabulous hat."

"Negative, Dibble, suspect is male human, six one, black leather jacket, denim shorts, high combat boots, but not wearing a fabulous hat, repeat, no fabulous hat."

"Confirmed, Despatch, will continue search."

Sound of screeching tires in the distance and a lot of screaming 

A perfect image of a priest

Back when I got my current PC I posted a retrospective of systems wot I owned since 1988, and how the rate of change had slowed from every couple of years for the first 20-odd years. The previous PC had done eight years, with a few graphics cards updates in that time. This one is on track to match the lifespan, and I hadn't even had to open the case (except for dusting) until a couple of years back when I popped a new SSD drive in. On more recent games I've had to start turning down the graphics settings a notch or two, so I figured it was time for a new graphics card.

Prices have gone a bit silly thanks to one or more of covid, crypto mining and AI, but I managed to snag a 5060 Ti with 16GB of RAM without needing to take out a second mortgage, which should be enough to handle anything the CPU can cope with. 

I should probably now find a game released within the last five years to actually give it a bit of a test, as my gaming is still ticking along without much change from the start of the year...