I’m dicking around with Google’s Chrome browser. It’s the only browser that renders Legends Of Zork at anything approaching playable speeds. But it doesn’t have Firefox’s handy “top 10 websites” dropdown from the awesome bar, which I’ve ingrained into my surfing habits instead of using bookmarks. Although there’s an adblock plugin, the Something Awful Forums plugin doesn’t have mouse gestures to navigate the forums. I am a huge jackoff for using mouse gestures linked to a specific forum, I know.
Why am I playing Legends of Zork? Because the gamestop clerk gave me a free card that said “register with this code and get a sweet avatar and the chance to win $6k once you hit level 5”. And then they hit you with “double your chances to win the money by hitting level 15”. The game itself isn’t bad – the enemy names are a bit heavy on the “random” element (Not charming since Dwarf Fortress decimated any other game’s claim to randomness by randomly generating an entire world with unique climate and geology plus 1000 years of civilization, history, and religion to go with it). There’s a sense of humor, executed with varying degrees of success. Essentially it’s a Vampire Wars / Mafia Wars / facebook action-point-based RPG. You can even spend real money to get advantages in-game.
I’m also playing Resonance of Fate, a game with a battle system so complicated it needs its own extensive guide. Fun. I’ll probably write more once I’ve finished.
Same for Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, a DS game where you collect and breed demons like they were pokemon, except this series has been around for much longer and it’s a lot darker. I’m stuck in the second dungeons – the game is known for its punishing difficulty.
