Blogs about gaming from Pew Pew Laser Blog

Puzzle Quest II.

Oh look, a skeleton. I'ma gonna keel him with my puzzle skillz.

It took 2 and a half years, but Puzzle Quest II is finally here. The core mechanic - match colored pieces á la Bejeweled - remains the same as with Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords. But while PQII is better than its predecessor Puzzle Quest: Galactrix, it's not as good as I wanted it to be.

The new mini-games which replace PQ: CotW don't quite measure up. Many of the mini-games in PQ II are required to progress through the game, and they don't modify the character's abilities as in the original game. There is no learning a spell from every foe, no sieging a city, and no epic sessions attempting to forge awesome new equipment.

I figure I'm halfway through the game, and I fear there's only one single dungeon, broken up into multiple levels. This feels much more limiting than the city-to-city traveling approach of the original.

Lastly, there appear to be no game play affecting choices in PQII. In the first Puzzle Quest, you could force a girl to marry an old man, and get a horse. If you let her go free, she'd join you on your travels. Also near the end of the game, you could choose a path of ultimate evil. I haven't yet encountered anything that interesting in this version.

Puzzle Quest II is not as good as I wanted it to be - it's a little less interesting, less polished, and something smaller than the original Puzzle Quest deserves. It's still fairly addicting, and I'm sure my sorcerer could kick the ass of your character, but it won't have the staying power of Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords.

Speaking of which, now that Game Crazy is closed, how will I turn used games into new games or cash?

A Great Wrong Has Been Righted.

I am now the proud recipient of my very first new EGM, as well as a $3.33 refund for my old EGM subscription, which was replaced with MAXIM when they stopped publishing EGM. Yes, 3 dollars and 33 cents, and it was totally worth it. It's the principle of the thing.

I had to write 2 letters to get this response from the publishers of MAXIM. I received no response from the first letter I wrote and sent in June of 2009. In May of this year, I sent a follow-up letter (mentioning the first), and my check came shortly thereafter. I was prepared to send many more followup letters, punishing the offensive publisher by wasting their resources opening my letters.

Overheard on the Bus.

A guy: Let's go home and play Mario Brothers!
His girl: What's it about?

Mario Bros is about rescuing a kidnapped princess. Jumping on mushrooms. Snatching coins from mid-air, particularly before you friend does. New Super Mario Bros. Wii is about so many things, and even the sum of them doesn't come close to explaining the fun potential.

Favorite Final Fantasys.

I shall now list the primary Final Fantasy games that I've played, in order of how much I like them. Oh, and do I really have to say "spoiler alert" for a 10 year old video game? Fine. Spoiler alert!

1. Final Fantasy VI (aka Final Fantasy III on SNES): I played this in it's original incarnation on the SNES. As a kid, my primary home never had a SNES. But we did have one during visitation weekends at our dad's. I would rent the cartridge over and over again, and hope that my save game hadn't been deleted.
2. Final Fantasy X-2: I enjoyed this immensely. The job-based leveling system was rewarding and strategic, and I also enjoyed all of the flashy girly costume changes. The only problem I had was the foolishness of the plot; the adventure centered on searching for a lost boyfriend, who may have been just a dream. I suppose it's a tad more unique than searching for a Princess.
3. Final Fantasy IX: This featured yet another implementation of the "job" system, which has always been my favorite kind of character building system. FF IX was also hilarious.
4. Final Fantasy VIII: While VIII didn't have the most interesting system for leveling up, it's story was excellent. It was tremendously mature and compared to its predecessors, and had one incredibly poignant scene on a spaceship that made me cry just a little.
5. Final Fantasy XII: This is pretty fun, but I haven't had time to finish it yet. I do like that the main character isn't not the central character to the story; the epic tale simply unfolds around him. I like the unique battle system, where I can just program the characters with actions to take under certain circumstances.
6. Final Fantasy IV (aka Final Fantasy II on the SNES): To this day, I miss having 5 characters in my party at once. And remember when Kain left the party and took his equipment?!? What a jerk.
7. Final Fantasy III: I played the recent version DS, and enjoyed the completely flexible characters and their jobs. The old school difficulty on this version kicked my butt without regular level-grinding. As is always the case with games requiring Wifi friends, I was disappointed that I didn't have any wifi friends so that I could earn the special wifi-only job.
8. Final Fantasy I: This first Final Fantasy was charming and pleasant, but just not terribly deep. Also, these early FFs really could hand you your ass.
9. Final Fantasy II: I played a pretty authentic port of this on the Final Fantasy Origins disc. One quirk was that instead of leveling up, your characters gained abilities based on what they did during battles. IE, if a character got hurt during the battle, they would earn a higher max HP value. I confess, I loved whomping my characters so that they would get stronger. I can't remember if I finished it; I should really pick it up again.
10. Final Fantasy V: I played this in the PS1 remake Final Fantasy Collection. I never finished, because one of my characters is stuck doing something wacky (I think it's a bug, rather than a curse). I should look into that.
11. Final Fantasy X: Rather like FF VII, FFX was epic and engrossing at its time, as it aged, I just don't remember it fondly.
12. Final Fantasy VII: By the time I played this on the Playstation 2, I had already known that Aeris was going to die, and couldn't wait for her to get on with it. It was revolutionary for its time, but doesn't have any special nostalgia for me.

Gaming For The Win.

Check out this article on Madden in the NFL. Not John Madden the man, per se, but Madden NFL the video game. A realistic enough simulation such as this allows players to get to that 10,000 hours of experience without the physical punishment of time on the field.

Several years ago, the husband used to win 98% of our cribbage games. Then I took a few terms of night classes at the community college. The bus ride to and fro was nearly an hour each way, and I would pass the time playing cribbage against an insanely good AI on my PDA. When husband and I play cribbage now, it's anybody's game.

I better start practicing Settlers of Catan and Carcassone on the Xbox. Is there an electronic version of Dominion? I'm embarrassingly bad at all of those games.

Better yet, how about a glassblowing simulator? I'm sure this could be done on the Wii; the Wiimote has a very sensitive gyroscope and the Wii Speak has a microphone. By no means would a glassblower's bench and rails be the silliest Wii peripheral out there. It sure would save me a lot of money in shop fees.

Hey Luigi, make a-me a punty.