Wednesday 31 October 2012

Haroldswife Rising - Age of Conan

Come on jugs - Let's do this!
Conan's story is incredibly imaginative. You are a slave who is in a shipwreck and loses their memory. You bear a 'mark' which you don't know the meaning of and you have to go on a lengthy quest to discover your hidden past.

I know right? What an incredible idea! Losing your memory means that gaining skills can be 'remembering a skill from your past' and the 'mark' means you're special and probably a super cool hero! (Except for the 50 other people with the mark running around every town you visit)
GAMES! You don't need to make up crappy plot points to explain your game mechanics. If the mechanics are fun we will happily ignore them - it's fine.
Waking up on the beach I have some exposition awkwardly sprayed at me from a wise stranger and then I'm off!
First things first, I bludgeon some crocodiles to death and collect their teeth. Hooray! I then loot the chests they've been guarding...because...erm...crocodiles like to...look it's fine I just want the loot, no need for logic (see the above point regarding fun). Combat in Conan is 'dynamic' and 'exciting' in exactly the way I don't want it to be. I want to right click an enemy to start auto-attacking and then press number keys to use skills when appropriate. In Conan you have three attacks: left, overhead, and right. Enemies display defence icons above and to either side of them and you should aim for the unguarded points. Abilities will either fire immediately or require you to press one or more of the attacks in a row to complete them. For a clicker like me it's incredibly tedious. I do have a super swanky keyboard though with loads of macro keys, so maybe it's time I started employing those.
Your attacks will also hit anything in front of you and can hit multiple opponents so positioning is very important too. This also makes me sad. How am I supposed to eat a sandwich and play with all this dynamicism going on?
Up the beach and into the woods and I meet my first quest-giver.

Imperilled!

As you can see it's a woman and, would you believe it she's hardly wearing anything! She's been chained up over the only path out of the woods (how clever!) so I have to kill some guy and get a key. I then have to escort her through the woods killing chumps, chimps and picts until we find my former master, the delightful fellow below:

Why can't I make someone who looks like this!

However, I still have to get another key from another monster to open the gate to the town blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
I've managed to find plenty of loot so far including this top:

Hello boys!

It's described as a 'gawdy pirate's top' but it clearly means Ann Summers playwear. Apparently it gives me +4 armour... They never mention that on the website though only the way it will make your man hot this Halloween.

As I approach this session's final destination - Tortage, I cross a bridge over a river of lava and I stop for a while and stare into it.

It would be soooo easy

I'm level 6 now I have some handy gear, I've got 5 abilities and I haven't come remotely close to dying. So while I'm staring at the lava river I'm thinking about something which I thought might come up in this project, but that I didn't think would come up so soon. Suicide. If my character only has one life like you and I, and it is tedious and full of ineffective clothing and unimaginitive conversations then why shouldn't I take control of it and end it? It would be so easy. I could tell you all that I slipped due to the wonky controls or that I thought the lava was just a nice texture and had no idea it would have the properties of molten rock. I could blame bad collision or make up any story really and none of you would care enough to check.

In the end, of course, I walk away from the river and into the town. The project is for me, Thom, not for Haroldswife. It's me who's frightened of the world and the task ahead of me and I shouldn't take it out on her or rob you, dear readers, of the no doubt more and more furious posts that are to follow.

Save and exit.

4 comments:

  1. I sure you could have squeezed past the scantily clad lady...she can't have been blocking the entire path to the woods!

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  2. She was being held with both chains AND invisible collision!

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  3. Don't steal my suicide idea, that's the only way I envision completing my Amnesia write up!

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