Punch's Blog

Legend of Grimrock has been released!

2012-04-12T16:46:00.000-07:00

http://www.grimrock.net/

Legend of Grimrock, an old-school styled dungeon crawler inspired by Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder, has been released. This game is based around exploring a dungeon with a party of four customizable characters, solving problems and puzzles, slaying monsters and finding ancient artifacts and tombs.

"Legend of Grimrock is a dungeon crawling role playing game with an oldschool heart but a modern execution. A group of prisoners are sentenced to certain death by exiling them to the secluded Mount Grimrock for vile crimes they may or may not have committed. Unbeknownst to their captors, the mountain is riddled with ancient tunnels, dungeons and tombs built by crumbled civilizations long perished now. If they ever wish to see daylight again and reclaim their freedom the ragtag group of prisoners must form a team and descend through the mountain, level by level."

2012-01-26T21:21:00.001-08:00

Steam has gone mobile!

So, today, steam has gone mobile with an app for phones and ipods. Seems rather interesting, although I still need to buy an actual phone that supports it.

Filler.

2012-01-26T21:06:00.001-08:00

Hi. Here's a picture of a hedgehog smoking some weed.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/44742947/blaze%20it%20up.swf

2011-12-10T09:04:00.000-08:00

Wallpaper I made using a paper texture, TESDragon font, and the Skyrim Logo, and some lightning effects.

1920x1080 HD wallpaper.

1920x1080 Wallpaper

2011-12-03T00:06:00.000-08:00

I made this wallpaper an hour or two ago. Took a couple of minutes, nothing too fancy. Free to use, this may not fit your desktop resolution and scaling it down is not a good idea, (Trust me, resolution gets messed.)

Dungeon Hack (1993)

2011-11-19T20:03:00.000-08:00

Dungeon Hack is a role playing game based on the Dungeons and Dragons world, and developed by DreamForge Intertainment and Strategic Simulations Inc, in 1993. The game is basically a '3D' dungeon crawling
RPG.

On game launch, you are greeted with an animated intro, featuring voice acting, (Which is top-notch, better than I expected) about the storyline.

After the intro, you get to the main menu. From there you can either view the intro a second time, continue from a saved game, choose a new character and start off from a different generated dungeon, or create a new character.

Here, I choose to create my new character. I didn't want to spend to much time on this sheet, but there really isn't that many things to do. You pick your class, sex, race, and alignment. Some of the options cancel out other- An evil gnome cannot be a Paladin, while a Lawful Half-elf cannot be a thief. Then, you roll on your stats. You can re-roll if you do not like what you are generated.

Next, you pick your name, and face. Some of the faces look strange, (Third one, top row, first one, bottom.) and this goes with both genders.

I decide to choose the strangest one there and name him Chuckles.

After this, the game generates a dungeon for you. Each dungeon is randomly generated, and there are endless possibilities to the dungeons, giving it great replay value.

This is the UI. On the left, you have your inventory and clothing. You are given rations and some gear to begin with. On the top is your HP and Food, which you need to keep both up or you will end up dead.
On the bottom-left is your map, a top down display. Beside that is your character portrait, and your two action bars. You can equip weapons to use here. Combat is simple- You stand in front of your enemy and click, or you can move around and click, as long as you are in reach. You also have a big chance of missing. Beside that is your four direction compass, and your direction panel. Movement is done with the arrow keys, and turning is done by clicking the turning buttons on the direction panel. Right in the middle, is a Hobgoblin- a general type of monster in this generated dungeon.

During your quest in the dungeons, you mainly need to find keys, objects, and other trinkets to solve puzzles. Gear and weapons can be found or dropped from monsters.

Here is one example of a puzzle. That Carnelian I picked up can be inserted into the wall to open a door to my left to continue on in the dungeon. This specific puzzle was poorly generated- sometimes the object you require is sitting right beside the puzzle.

Once you find the exit of the dungeons, after slashing through monsters and the undead, you are greeted with another dungeon. You repeat this process until you get to your final dungeon.

The death screen is a simple scoreboard, and contains all of the records for the default game.

Overall, Dungeon hack is a game for boredom and rainy days. It doesn't have much to offer besides a fun time and ultimate replay value. To play this on your system, you require a computer running DOS or you can use DOS box. Copies of this game can be found online, but I'm not sure about retail.

I give this game a rating of 60/100% in total.

Of course though, I'm not a professional reviewer. You should definitly play the games I rate, even if I give them a low rating. Also check other sources. Comment if you think this deserves a lower or higher rating, and why.

Have fun!

Proper introduction

2011-11-19T19:20:00.000-08:00

Anyway, thought I'd make an introduction to this blog.

Basically, I use this for personal opinions, reviews, and other things.
I regularly play games most of the day on my computer, and I have a steam account. (Ibman42)
I own a collection of around 300 DOS games, and I plan to make a review of most of them over the next little while, and a Steam library of 90 games. I have administrative experience to Garrysmod roleplay servers, ( I've played on servers that run the Open Aura script for nearly a year now, I've been an operator to a head admin.)

Anyway, that's a little bit about me.

Making a review in a bit of one of my favourite DOS games, Dungeon Hack.

Anyway, enjoy the site.

2011-11-12T09:10:00.001-08:00

Well, I rather liked the second one, this looks exciting.

Quick Review of the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

2011-11-11T21:33:00.000-08:00

Alright, I got this game today and I'm pretty satisfied by it.

It cost me about 59$, for PlayStation 3, and it included a map of the continent of Skyrim, and I was suprised by the thick material it was made from, like an ancient map. After some troubles with installing the game onto the PS3's hard-drive, it started to work. (Constant instant-death at new game.). After about an hour of game-play, I was astonished by how in-depth this game is. I've played other Bethesda games, but none of them left an impression such as the detail and enriching world Skyrim has to offer. Of course, the game isn't about how good the map terrain looks.

The combat system isn't as well done as the other games, just from a few simple things that's probably causing some issues and annoyances, mainly not being able to block with dual wielded swords, axes, and daggers. This can get frustrating as higher level enemies and mobs can deal some pretty good damage onto your character if you aren't prepared to fight them while using dual wielding items. But over-all, the combat mechanisms are fine to play with, especially the ability to equip a spell and a sword, or two spells to make an even more powerful spell.

The graphics of the game are good from a standing distance, but up close you can see the Terrain texture clipping, and notice some of the shrubs and such are simply layered sprites instead of proper models.
The effects are marvellous though, and being able to preview items in the UI is a nice touch to the game. You can zoom in and see the items in higher detail, and spells and shouts are also viewable by a floating effect. The model artists really went all out making the models with such detail.

Now, to the UI itself. Some people say it's not as good as Oblivions or Morrowind's, but I personally think it's alright. I don't really love it, but I don't really hate it. It matches the style of Skyrim's atmosphere though, with its simplistic white and black colours, and four panel menu display.

By this, I mean, when prompted to open your Character Menu, you are not greeted by a scroll textured menu containing all your needs, but a four selection menu. Going up brings you to the skills page, where you can level and spend points on your skills, (In Skyrim, you level up your skills simply by carring out actions that factor on that skill, and levelling is based on skills to begin with. Raise Skill = Gain Level = Spend points.), To your right is your inventory, containing weapons, armour, scrolls, books, misc items, and everything else of that nature. To the bottom is the world map of Skyrim's mass continent, where you can fast travel between found locations to save yourself the trip, although it is much more adventurous to walk the way or ride on horseback. To the left is your spells and shouts section. All of your magic spells, from destruction to conjuration are stored here, and your shouts. Shouts are an ability that the main character has and can preform, being a Dovahkiin, or, Dragonborn. During your adventures you will encounter new shouts and powers. I don't really want to give much away about the storyline, although the story is what makes Bethesda games so amazing.

The animations are far superior to that of the past games. The running and attacking has been completely redone, and everything else flows more smoothly. The models of character faces and bodies are a work of art, each race having it's distinct feel to it. The amount of voice acting and sound effects are also quite amazing. The game, (According to Bethesda, ) has gone from 20 voice actors in Oblivion, to around 70 in Skyrim. All of the NPC's are interactive via radiant story, and there are tons of creatures to hunt down and see, from Frost Trolls to Giants that wander the Tundra, herding Mammoths.

There is a lot of glitches in the game though, but that can be expected from such a large game.
Things from quest scripting glitches to physics glitches are common, as you can see in the IGN review. Your body can be launched so far into the air you will die from the impact, and not the attack, and NPC's do tend to get off task and stop moving unless you return to them during quests.

But, Overall,

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is an amazing game, and worth the price tag. I'd give this game a 8/10, for it's amazing quality, but it does have its mass array of bugs, glitches, and texture clips in some areas.

Although Daggerfall is still 30,000 times the size of any other elder scrolls map, Skyrim still has a lot to offer.