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.

Dead! - Age of Empires 2: Age of Kings

The dictionary defines Empire as "an extensive group of states or countries ruled over by a single monarch, an oligarchy, or a sovereign state". However, when I hear the word 'Empire' I can think of only one thing. Star Wars. The Empire in Star Wars was huge. Sure, they were evil and killed a lot of innocent people, but man...did they get stuff done.

The Empire would be remembered for many things. It's ruler, who fired lightning from his nails. A right hand man, who used to be good, but went evil, but then became good again (losing his right hand in the process). And it's difficult to forget blowing up a planet and generally causing terror around the universe. This particular empire lasted a whole three films before it was brought down by a farm hand, a smuggler and some teddy bears.

I hoped that my empire, the Britons, wouldn't share too many similarities to the evil empire of Star Wars, but instead, be remembered for many great things. And I think it was...though the historians might question the 10,693 spare wood in my possession, as my empire fell.

Alpha Proto-YOUR FACE! BAM! CUFF LINK ADJUST!

Here we go.

In my first not-Amnesia adventure, I'll be setting an end to global terror, preferably without being spotted, in my attempt to clock a game I barely scratched the first time round. Surely there will be bombs, nay, NUKES, foreigners with big angry face muscles, mysterious figure heads who smoke massive cigars, fast cars, and lady spies failing to cover up their undergarments. LETS ROCK!

'A' is for Procrastination

Bastard.

Creationist - Age of Conan

I love a character creator.

We all do. It's such a compelling piece of PC culture that some games have a separate standalone launcher for theirs, and some even release them as the game's demo. How many glowing reviews were there of APB's technologically stunning character creator compared to the final game? However, more than just allowing you to have ownership over your story's lead character, it also opens up a world of possibilities for undermining the game's narrative and theme.

Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings

Age of Empires 2: Age of Kings

Unlike my stalwart blog companions, Thom and Neil, I was actually quite looking forward to my first game play through. Age of Empires, as a series has always been one of my favourites. I have fond memories of staying up late with my brother and cousin, playing on the downstairs PC till the early hours.

The First Hurdle - Age of Conan

It is with some trepidation that I install the first game in my catalogue - Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, or Age of Conan: Unchained as it's now called.

There's a lot to be worried about. This blog is the first enterprise of this type that I've done and I'm concerned I won't follow it through all the way. I have no pedigree in following through on my good ideas and what the Gods of game-naming have delivered to me to help me on my way is an MMO.

'A' is for 'Alpha Protocol'

JASON BOURNE RPG! YEEEEAAAAHH!...

...was my first reaction to Alpha Protocol, as I'm pretty sure was the original pitch. As ever a victim of the Steam Daily Deals, yours truly grabbed it for the price of half a mild. No matter which way you swing it, that's a bargain. If I was to boot it up, loath it to its blackened soul, and stalk the developers stroking guns afterwards, that's still a form of entertainment in itself, so it was a no-brainer.

Quick Save / Quick Load

You were my friends. Always there. Every time I was to jump over a deceptively easy gap, you got my back, Quick Save. I knew that if I fumbled my steps or a game designer had stuck some  collision down and determined I shouldn't go there, you and your buddy Quick Load, would get me back to where I was.

If I saw a large enemy with obvious weak spots, we'd have a pep talk, then I would try and take him down. Sometimes it wasn't a problem, and the talk seemed like a waste of time, but more often than not, you picked me up when I fell.

If I said the wrong thing in a conversation, I could call on you to undo it all and make sure I got the best (read; correct) ending.

In fact, Quick Save and Quick Load, you are my best mates in the world of video games.

Tipping the hat, and slagging Deus Ex

"Well you can FUCK OFF!"

But I digress.

Aside from worrying about first impressions, the first thoughts to creep into my mind-brain when going over the idea were a) "Can I write worth a damn?" (short answer, not really!) and b) pure fear at having to replay some of my library that I haven't said hello to in years (if at all).

You only get one shot...

Do not miss your chance to flow, this opportunity comes pretty much any time you decide really. No big deal.

The boys and I have had a few schemes in our time, but none of them ever came to anything. Bands we were going to form, games we were going to make. Nice ideas but we didn't have the energy for them really. But when we started chatting about this over Steam (which I guess is the modern day equivalent of 'over tea' ) we all started to get strangely excited. This was an idea we could actually do! And all we had to do was play games and occasionally write a couple of hundred words! This scheme had LEGS.

The Rules

Games must be played alphabetically according to their title - No skipping ahead to the fun ones, or putting off the ones we're dreading. The title is either the name on the box's spine, or the default Steam library entry.

Games Catalogue includes all games purchased before 01/10/2012 - Any games acquired after this time will not be included in the catalogue.

Attempts will be made on 'Hard' difficulty - We don't want this to go on forever, we've all got literally 1000's of hours of games to get through. For games that use clever names for difficulty modes, it will be the mode above the one the game defaults to.

Fail criteria may alter per-game - You can't 'die' in some games so other fail criteria will have to be used. This will be made clear at the start of any articles for that game

Some games may be excluded - If a game basically can't be 'failed' - Championship Manager for example - then they may be excluded

Co-op and Multiplayer

Co-op and multiplayer will require some special rules. For some games, if we're all starting at roughly the same time then we'll do a co-op runthrough together, however, the attempt will fail if any one of us is killed.

For some games where dying and re-spawning is a common occurrence (Battlefield, League of Legends etc) then failure will be considered as losing the overall round.

We may decide to do multiplayer or co-op as a series of 'specials' outside of the alphabetical runthrough depending on how we feel it's going, so watch this space (or rather the space with the fun, interesting, non-bureaucratic posts in)