The Oil Blue

The Oil Blue is an indie action sim by chubigans of Vertigo Games, where you drill for oil and sell it on the world market in order to remain profitable, as well as completing missions for your employer, the United Oil of Oceana Company.  I picked this one up in the Indie Royale’s Xmas Bundle, along with a few other games.. they’ve now added greenTech+, an earlier game by Vertigo Games which has you save the world from global warming using a hurricane!

The tutorial shows you how to use your first drilling machines: the Groundwell and the Oil Derrick.  Keeping the Groundwell running seemed easy enough.. strike a balance between speed and power consumption, and keep an eye out for flat batteries.  The Oil Derrick was a bit more complex..

While the drill is working, you get oil signatures coming up on the right hand side.. these are revealed as either pockets of air or oil.  When you see oil, you have to slow the drill down, move it left or right to position it above the oil, pump the oil, then re-start the drill until the next pocket of oil appears.  You also need to watch the Pressure and Stress gauges.  Pressure can be vented at regular intervals, and increases more quickly while the drill is slowed down, while Stress accumulates through use, until it reaches critical levels, where you have to shut down the machine and go for repairs.  Pressure also increases Stress.  Not venting pressure leads to the machine breaking down..

Repairing the machines involves mini-games.  In the tutorial I saw two types, one to keep a laser within a moving red circle, and another to make a set of four target lights come on simultaneously by turning on different adapters and switching between different levels of lights until you hit the correct combination.

Once in the game itself, “Rotary Misfire” came up as my repair mini-game three times; I managed to complete the puzzle by chance on my first two attempts, but I couldn’t get it the third time.  This puzzle requires you to hit the spacebar just before the lights complete a full circle.

I had to actually come back to the tutorial and have this puzzle appear in the set of three to see the instructions.. whether they were obscured by previous messages on the right.. or whether they just don’t appear all the time, I don’t know.

The next two machines, the Pumpjack and Drill Rig, were unlocked as I played, with brief tutorials showing how to use them.  The Pumpjack requires less interaction than the Oil Derrick, with plenty of time during setup or calibration, where you can check on the other machines and the market.  The Drill Rig follows a path you plot for it onscreen, and will gather oil as it travels over it.  To get all the oil from a bubble, the path has to be set to go back and forth over it: two options here, then.. to be efficient with a short path over a bubble to maximise oil collection, but have to watch the machine while it does it, or plot longer paths and be able to flick back over the other machines.  As the Drill Rig is a rare machine, it doesn’t appear on every island.

On the islands I played, my set up was a Groundwell, an Oil Derrick and a Pumpjack.  I started up all the machines, then parked myself over the Oil Derrick because of the pressure release requirement, as well as needing to catch the oil pockets as they were revealed.  This was also the machine I found most likely to blow up, as the pressure led to stress if I wasn’t fast enough in venting it.  In fact, I found the Oil Derrick needed so much prodding that I kept missing the Pumpjack’s window of drilling opportunity!

I can see it getting even harder to adequately manage when there are more machines,.. although they level up with use.  When a machine levels up, parts are added or replaced, improving performance.. an example being the Groundwell’s additional batteries which allows you to go faster.  The improvements are only effective per mission.. you leave the machines behind when you move to the next island.

You do keep your own rank though, which increases as you sell oil and unlocks more machines and different challenges.. You also get some funny titles as you increase too: eg the Rank 40 title: “Useful Bum”! 🙂

The Lashtail Hatchling

I found another rather interesting quest chain while earning reputation with the Darkspear Trolls over in Stranglethorn..

Over in Grom’Gol Base Camp, I picked up a quest to go and kill of some raptor eggs.  I was just smashing the last egg when the Lashtail Hatchling appeared!  This added a quest to check with Far Seer Mok’thardin back at camp.. he said I should feed him Murloc meat..

After this, I headed back to camp but got no new quest.. so I thought he was a temporary pet, maybe lasting until I logged off.

That was, until I was sent to deal with some food thieves in the Bal’lal ruins, and my little friend found me a skull!  This set off a chain of tasks when the skull went back to camp, and into a cauldron for a bit of troll magics.. he turned out to be the skull of a troll lord, who wanted me to help him return to life.  Did I suspect that this might be an evil skull?  Not at this point..

Following the collection of some artifacts, the body of the troll lord’s enemy, and some mojo, the Bloodlord Mandokir appeared..

He turned out to be evil, and he demanded my Lashtail Hatchling! 🙁

His departing comments mentioned Zul’Gurub.. so I didn’t think this would be the last of the story.. then in Bambala, I got a quest leading to a Mind Vision where I saw through the inside of Zul’Gurub through the hatchling’s eyes..

More quests followed: fetching Braddock’s Big Brain for a Mind Control quest, and an attempt to rescue the Hatchling, where I attempted to flee Zul’Gurub!

My first attempt ended in capture by net, and I was sent back to the beginning, where I realised I was able to talk to the raptor at the start.  This turned out to be a fantastic little mini-game, with adult raptors teaching me different abilities such as chewing through nets, lighting fires to distract the soldiers, and dropping skulls in their paths to trip them!

Just at the exit, I was caught by a lurking Shade of the Hexxer, ending the Mind Control session.. looks like I need to go into Zul’Gurub and rescue the Hatchling for myself!

Fable III

My current options for 360 and PS3 games are playing via an old PC with an old capture card (low quality image), or playing on the TV in the lounge (noisy for Tim, and no contact with my friends who are on the PC).

I’d been trying to resist starting on Fable III until I had a HDMI capture card in my PC.. however, the lure was too strong..  I absolutely loved Fable II, as I had the Black & White games, also from Lionhead Studios, so I knew I would love playing this one too.. even if it meant taking over the lounge!

As with the other games, you are given a choice when responding to quests.. allowing you to become good or evil as you wish.  Your morality affects your appearance, with NPCs you come across reacting to you with either greetings or.. well, I’ve not played an evil character long enough to see them yet 😉

Abilities are upgraded through Guild Seals, which you earn for completing quests, defeating enemies and interacting with NPCs.  The seals can be then used to purchase the abilities you want in the “The Road to Rule”; a ghostly path where we meet the awesomely voiced Blind Seer from Fable II.

So.. I start off as a princess, wandering around the castle gardens, grabbing people by the hand and making them run along with me, just because it’s funny to see.. then I find out that my older brother, Logan, is up to no good.

People across Albion are starving, and some of them have decided to protest.. Logan has decided that this will be solved by killing some of the protestors.  I’m supposed to try to convince him to play nice, but Logan forces me to choose between my childhood sweetheart, Elliot, and the protesting villagers.  I save the villagers (Sorry Elliot, but it was never going to work..), then flee the castle with the assistance of my loyal friends; Sir Walter, and the butler, Jasper.

We need to take Logan out, but first we need support, and we start off in a freezing camp in the mountains, where we’re tasked with finding an artifact to prove my Hero status, getting rid of Saker, the leader of a band of mercenaries, and getting neighbouring Brightwall to send food.

In addition to completing quests, support can be gained by making the people in each area like you.. if you were evil, I suppose this would require people to fear you.  Unlike in Fable II, you can only impress one person at a time, by interacting with them and choosing the relevant action.. after a while they will ask you to run an errand for them; if you do it, they will then be your friend.

Once you have made friends with an NPC, you can also take it a bit further.. I appear to have attracted the attentions of Alice the Housewife, who wants me to take her on a date..
As you have to build up your relationship with an NPC before further options appear, I think this means there will be no repeat of my accidental cheating on one of my Fable II husbands, which happened when I clicked on the wrong NPC to follow me to bed.. my Fable II character was a bigamist slut! 😉

Although running errands takes up time running to one location only to run back again, it does provide you with Guild Seals and presents from those NPCs you have made friends with.  To save time, you can always teleport into the Sanctuary to use the map for fast travel.  You’ll also want to visit the Sanctuary to open your presents, or to mess around with your clothing and such, although Jasper will nudge you towards the DLC from time to time.  Some of the DLC is free, which would gain Lionhead some brownie points if not for the fact that some of the paid DLC was on the disk at launch.. that’s a topic for another time, though.

Shops close at night, and tonight this got me into trouble while befriending a shopkeeper at closing-time.. a guard came in, demanding that I leave.. by the time my rather long interaction finished, he had run out of patience and charged me with trespassing 🙁

When convicted of a crime you have two options: community service or resisting arrest.
As I’m a good girl, I chose to do community service and ended up making pies.. one of the various little mini-game jobs you can do around most towns.  Making pies consists of hitting A and X when prompted, while your character rolls out pastry and sticks it on the top of a pie.. the other jobs are blacksmithing and lute playing, which also attracts a crowd of people who cheer along while you play, but boo if you mis-click.

Screenshots will be added once I have my HDMI capture card 😉