Nestlings

Quite a few weeks back, somebody recommended I try Nestlings, a mod for Half Life 2 by Lewis Denby.  This is available on ModDB, and requires Half Life 2: Episode 2.

Rather than a game, this was described as “an experiment in story and mood”.
You start off facing an old, abandoned-looking house, completely surrounded by darkness.  Oh, what to do?

There’s a note pinned to the wall by the door which sets the scene – someone conducting some kind of research out here, all alone.. and imploring ‘Annabelle’ to turn around and run away.  Creepy.

There are more notes scattered in the rooms of the house, pages from a diary with details of research into the Nestlings, some kind of supernatural creatures from out in the forest.  I was expecting these Nestlings to jump out at me as I started to explore the rooms, but I made it upstairs without incident..

Through the ground floor, I managed to find the diary pages in the right order, but upstairs I turned left to start at one end, rather than opening the door directly in front of me.  This meant I came across the last note first; this page had a key attached which would unlock the attic.

I checked out the other rooms before heading up the ladder, as I really didn’t want to miss anything.. but after that there was only the attic left..

I think one of these bodies has to be the researcher, as the diary pages all foreshadow him being at the “peak of the house”, but I think that the second is Annabelle.  I think she would have come looking for the researcher and either died of the illness mentioned in her note, or met the same fate as he did.

After reading Annabelle’s note, the attic door slid shut and the lighting changed; after the lack of anything jumping out on me previously, this actually made me scream! 🙂

The abandoned house and rather abstract story reminded me of Dear Esther, another experimental story-mod I played a while back.
Looking at the developer’s blog, it seems Dear Esther has had a few updates over the past few months with some amazing looking graphical tweaks too!  He also mentions another, final, level is in the works, which I’m sure will be well worth checking out when the time comes.

Darkmoon Faire

Another in-game event, the Faire happens once a month, and so this is my first one.
The wagons appeared the day before the faire was to start:

I’m still being surprised by how things change in the game world.  I think if I’d have come across these by myself, I would have wondered what was going on, but I might not have thought to check back..

Darkmoon Faire is easy to get to for anybody this month, being close to a starting area.  At other times it appears in rather more high-level areas.. keeps things interesting, though.

Within the Faire there are various traders, some of which sell more unusual items, along with some interesting characters such as the strongest woman, all with little quests to earn tickets.  The tickets can be turned in for random items, as with the blossoms at the Midsummer Fire Festival.

There was also an odd little character selling frog boxes, and I picked up a couple of new pets to add to the collection 😉

I also had myself fired from a cannon, but was unable to land dead-centre in the target, a lake a little further away.  Nice flight though 😀

X-53 Touring Rocket

There’s something quite clever about the Recruit-a-Friend programme on WoW.. aside from the useful Summon spell, and the increased XP when working together, there is also the awesome X-53 Touring Rocket.  This is a reward given to the veteran once the recruit has actually joined the game as a fully paid member.  Good for Blizzard, and definitely good for those getting the rocket 😉

My friend finally earned his this weekend, and we’re using it at every chance we can get..

As it’s a two-seater, it means you don’t need to buy a flying mount each, and well.. it’s a rocket.

Who doesn’t love a nice big rocket?  Innuendos aside, it does look pretty awesome 🙂

Night Terror

Last night we were playing on the original Left 4 Dead, on a quite awesome custom campaign called Night Terror.  This is a six-part campaign created by NIPPER and DrBoo, available here on l4dmaps.com.

We played this campaign a while back, and it was the haunted mansion map which stuck in my mind the most, with it’s originality and fantastic voice work by the narrator.

The door closed in a small circular room closed once we were all inside, and the ceiling started moving upwards..  The narrator informed us that there were no windows and no doors, and that we could try and find a way out, or take his way out.. mind tricks being played as the ceiling was replaced for a few seconds by a different ceiling with a hanging man, though you need to be looking straight up to see him.

My favourite bit though, was the ghost ride along the path once outside.
Somebody has to get off to open the gates, and then again to restart the buggy, but then it’s a nice ride through the haunted graveyard 🙂

The next bit of the nightmare is straight out of the Mines of Moria, and very clever too.  The book lying on the edge of the well is the trigger for the next event, with some more fantastic voice work.  After you’ve done reading, the bucket tips into the well and summons a horde led by a tank!

This part is fairly hectic, and so far we’ve lost somebody each time.  Following this, things don’t get any easier with a huge room full of zombies, and another door which doesn’t open until after two waves.

Endless stairs.. Just as well Coach isn’t in this team, or he’d be complaining 😉

We had a silly number of smokers on the stairs last night, who just kept picking survivors off.  Such easy targets, with no walls to hide behind..

I also loved the Jungle map, which contains some sneaky traps, but overall feels a lot easier than the Moria section.  A friend was rather too amused by me getting squished by one trap which caught me completely unaware, coming down from the ceiling.  We all laughed when the bot was squished by a rolling spiked cylinder a little further on though!

The finale is started off by an alarm clock in a strange, destroyed bedroom.  Personally my alarm clock starts my nightmare, rather than ending it – I don’t like getting out of bed in the morning 😉
Another amusing touch comes with the ending.. the survivors rescue themselves, rather than being picked up by helicopter or boat.. by running into what looks like a glowing portal to a laser disco!

Two Taurens

This will be the third pair of characters made with a friend, but this time, we’re levelling two of the same race and class.

We’re Tauren Druids this time, which means early levelling in the lovely, peaceful Mulgore.  After that I’m not too sure where we’re heading, but it does feel like there’s still more to learn with this character than with previous ones, especially since these have multiple forms.  More to learn, maybe more stress, but who knows?

I think the bear form is a bit ugly, but I do quite like the travel form.  Here, kitty kitty..

Headshot

The mutation of this week has been Headshot.

In this mode, zombies can only be killed by headshot.  We found this mode a bit tougher than the last, but more enjoyable.

I did struggle to find a good screenshot to add here, though.. flailing at the zombies during a horde event, or being wildly inaccurate in shooting leads to rather a lot of carnage, and the headshot looks even more gory.  Enough gore that I thought it might look a bit too gratuitous..

So instead, here’s an angry young man brandishing an axe 🙂

Voting has been on all week to see what next week’s encore mutation will be.
I’m hoping for Chainsaw Massacre again, as it was a lot of fun, but I wouldn’t be unhappy for a return of this as we’ve actually played it more than the required try-it-out once.

Midsummer Fire Festival

It’s the first time I’ve seen a holiday event in WoW, and I have to say it was much more of a big thing than I’d have expected.

The first I knew of it, we had been hit with a buff seemingly out of nowhere, and at first I was looking around for a random other player who might have done it.

So we began visiting bonfires – including the Alliance’s bonfires, which we of course chose to desecrate.  This resulted in us being flagged for PvP, and in one instance, being chased by some guys who were a lot higher level.  I managed to get away, but they killed poor Vorlak 😉

There are tokens to be won for completing various quests, some more involved, and some rather more ‘fun’ tasks, such as torch tossing and torch catching!  I found throwing the torches onto the required targets fairly easy to do, but throwing and catching a torch was much more difficult, especially with other people’s thrown torches in the air too.

The tokens can be redeemed for various goodies, the most expensive of which is a small pet, the Captured Flame.
The festival is running for another two weeks, so I’m hoping I can get enough tokens together for this..

In the meantime, we’re on a mission to collect another pet, the Mechanical Chicken!  We’ve rescued two OOX homing robots so far, and have one more to go!

New things at E3

I’ve been looking at some of the info on the games and tech, and there has been plenty to get my interest.

The Fallout series holds a special place in my heart, so after seeing that Fallout: New Vegas has been dated for October 22nd, I’ve mentally written off the end of October in terms of playing other games.  This is despite the announcement of an October 26th release date for Fable III, another game I’ve been looking forward to – it will have to wait until after Fallout 😉

Pre-E3, there were rumours about what Valve might be revealing, after they said they’d be revealing something big.  It looks like the big secret was the fact that Steam is to come to the PS3 – while that’s good news for console players, I was rather hoping for Episode 3.

Portal 2 is on the way, but this was hardly new for E3, though the trailer was quite nice.  I’m quite excited about the co-op mode, and find the idea of playing as a robot or turret rather amusing 🙂

In addition to the two Warhammer 40,000 games, Dark Millennium Online and Space Marine, which I mentioned in the last post, THQ have also announced Red Faction: Armageddon, follow-up to Red Faction: Guerilla.  There was also a very brief mention of Darksiders 2.  I have yet to complete Red Faction: Guerrilla or Darksiders – again, with the consoles..

Must try harder 😉

Call of Duty: Black Ops is another game in my wanted list, though not as high up as the previous games.  I enjoyed Modern Warfare 2, but beyond single player, I didn’t find myself playing it so much.
I tend to prefer playing with a few friends rather than strangers with their camping, mic-spamming, teabagging ways.  Though sometimes I still get the latter from friends.. ah well.

Kinect, formerly Natal, is being shown at E3 too.  Along with the child-oriented Kinectimals, there are a large number of fitness and sports type games planned to use the system.  While I love the tech, these titles are very close to titles I already have for the Wii and so what’s on offer here isn’t going to make me rush out to buy the system.
PlayStation Move had more games on offer, but again doesn’t really add much on from the Wii.

40k Nerdiness

I’ve been watching some of the videos coming out of E3 tonight.. things are looking interesting on the games front!

Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium Online, the long awaited MMO, is finally being talked about.  A friend was asking about this a good while back, with another interested too.  Makes all the difference when friends have your back.

Rather a teasing video, this one..
Demons, aliens and heretics, versus the Imperium of Man?  Damn right, there will be war 😉

It’s early on yet, but the graphics are already looking rather nice and I’m looking forward to seeing more.
I broke my usual rules, and included a screenshot from THQ’s site here.  If this is anything to go by.. wow 🙂

Again from THQ and Relic, we have Warhammer 40,000:Space Marine.  This one’s for the console, rather than the PC.

Watching this video, I see some similarities to Gears of War, another game I loved.
Take your huge, heavily-armoured brute and run him straight at the enemy: awesome!

There’s only room for one..

In a normal game you would be looking out for your team mates, helping them as they would be helping you.  With ‘Room for One’, those other survivors become a threat the closer you are to the end of the level..

I played this with a friend on The Parish’s Bridge level, as we already have a rather set route and plan for rushing to the end.  I won, but it felt rather a hollow victory..

I was prepared to save him up until the last stretch, but I can easily imagine that if playing with randoms you could find yourself abandoned to the first thing that grabs you, regardless of distance through the map.  I’m quite sure this means plenty of random groups not making it very far at all.

There might only be room for one in this newest mutation, but I don’t want to be alone.  Aww, I know..  This game mode feels like a lose-lose proposition to me. If I’m playing with friends I want them to survive, and don’t particularly want to leave them behind.

Next week, I believe we have ‘Headshot’.  I think this will be a bit more of a challenge, as my weapon of choice is the auto-shotty, however:  bring it on!