No Photo Contest

No one sent me any photos this week. I didn't have any particularly good ones either. Anyway, I went to the zoo today and got some pictures, so I'm putting them up instead. Enjoy!

The otters were swimming about, which was a lot of fun to see. Usually, they just laze about in their little nest of hay.


There are a bunch of neat flowers in the zoo right now. I liked this one a lot.


The prairie dogs just had some youngn's, it seems. Their hive was swarming with them. There was a prairie dog digging a new hole. It seemed to be making a lot of progress for something so small.

Neverwinter Nights 2: Re-Review

Neverwinter Nights 2 is a good game until you get to the last chapter. No, that's not entirely accurate: the game gets worse as you go. That's a much better description. One of the many little frustrating things of the last portion of the game is that every single enemy you fight is undead. This means that many abilities are worthless: sneak attack, critical hits, ranger's favored races, and so on.

Maybe the particular problem is unique to me, but when I got to the last dungeon, the AI of my allies simply ceased working. The NPCs would do nothing at all without orders. I lost several characters at the entrance to the dungeon, since they died without resistance before I realized what the problem was.

The last dungeon doesn't let you rest to recharge your spells and HP, either. Instead, whenever you try to rest, a group of (presumably ninja) mummy lords materializes around you. This meant that my wizard, in particular, became worthless pretty quickly once he ran out of high level spells.

Anyway, if you are interested in NWN 2, keep in mind that once you're done making your character, it's all downhill from there. (Not that making the character isn't fun).


PS: I don't know if I mentioned this in the previous review, but the loading times are criminal. It was to the point where I felt I should be playing some other game while waiting for the next zone to load.

Photo Contest: Wet

The subject is Wet. Next Week's subject is Pets.


Don't Cross The Streams


Lettuce Pray


Water Drop


Untitled

The World's Longest Running Blog

Isn't mine. In fact, the oldest Blog is none other than GURPS' Sjgames.com. You can see their full archives here, beginning in November 1994.

PS. This Realistic-looking Dinosaur Comics is pretty awesome

Neverwinter Nights 2

A friend of mine (who is practically illiterate), has said that I have too little writing here, and too much photo contest material. I've decided to rectify that with a review of Neverwinter Nights 2.

NWN 2 is a good game. It has some issues, (long loading times between zones becomes frustrating quickly, and the processor intensive graphics limit the computers it can be played on), but it is enjoyable despite them. You can make a large variety of characters, and the NPC companions are interesting and numerous. The voice acting is definitely on the good side of the scale.

It does a great job of capturing D&D for a pseudo turn based computer game. Whether you enjoy this is dependent on how much you like D&D, really. All of the basics are there: races, classes, feats, skills, etc.

Social interaction is done very well, for a video game. It'll never approach the infinite options of a pencil-and-paper RPG, but it does a good job of giving you options, most of the time. Some conversation trees seem to lead inevitably to giving offense, or making some stupid statement. Your dialogue choices do affect the game, which is always nice. You can make your companions more or less friendly, and you can use conversation skills in dialogue trees to make fights easier or avoid them entirely.

The graphics are quite nice, although, since it is a computer game, this means that fewer people will be able to play it. (Does anyone know why games don't have a "this will work for older computers but it looks like a bunch of cardboard cutouts" mode? Seems like some people would appreciate that.)

Overall, I'd give Neverwinter Nights 2
.85 Out of 5 Pongs

Photo Contest: Soft

This Week's subject is Soft. Next Week's is wet.

Only Two pictures this time. I imagine everyone was busy with finals. Now that it's summer, there'll probably be more participation.

Wind Baby


Kitteh

Personal Loss

My Sixth-level Bard/Paladin just died, so I'm a little down. I'm making a rogue, but I just don't know if my heart is going to be in it.

Photo Contest: Light

Next week's subject is Soft.


On the subject of Light, we have:

Sun Flowers


The Monsters


Eat My Beams



Holding The Darkness At Bay



Late entry...

Glowing Candles

Republican Science

In the recent Republican debate, three of the ten men running for president don't believe in evolution. How is this possible? I suppose it's possible that some of them are just pretending, but that would be even worse. I vowed I wouldn't make this a whiney, emo political blog, so I'm going to stop now.