I’m kinda in the mood for something a little different so I’ve decided to play through Dreamfall: The Longest Journey. I was a big fan of the original The Longest Journey game and really look forward to seeing where the story goes in the sequel. And while I’m not all that patient with some of the obtuse puzzles from adventure games I did manage to solve the puzzle with the monkey and the hat and the shadow that looked like a detective. You remember that one don’t you?

So I started Dreamfall earlier this week and I like it so far, except for the lame combat. I haven’t gotten very far yet but the main character is Zoë and she lives in our future and she’s sorta aimless and she’s learning martial arts. Yes I was pretty surprised when I got to my first fight in Dreamfall but I won it without a hitch. I’m hoping they leave any combat really easy as I don’t want to have to mix my twitch-skills with my adventure games.

I think I reached the point where the plot is developing as Zoë was just captured by commandos and interrogated. Seems good so far though it is a definite change from it’s predecessor. I’m going to try to move through this kinda quick and then get back to my regular diet of RPG’s.

I never even got to play Iron Lore’s Titan Quest and the Immortal Throne expansion before they shut down. Reading something like this by Michael Fitch at THQ is both fascinating and also makes me very sad for the sake of PC gaming:

So, ILE shut down. This is tangentially related to that, not why they shut down, but part of why it was such a difficult freaking slog trying not to. It’s a rough, rough world out there for independent studios who want to make big games, even worse if you’re single-team and don’t have a successful franchise to ride or a wealthy benefactor. Trying to make it on PC product is even tougher, and here’s why.

Piracy. Yeah, that’s right, I said it…

Titan Quest did okay. We didn’t lose money on it. But if even a tiny fraction of the people who pirated the game had actually spent some god-damn money for their 40+ hours of entertainment, things could have been very different today. You can bitch all you want about how piracy is your god-given right, and none of it matters anyway because you can’t change how people behave… whatever. Some really good people made a seriously good game, and they might still be in business if piracy weren’t so rampant on the PC. That’s a fact.

I did buy legitimate copies through Steam so I tried to do my part. There’s plenty of people who play the game and don’t pay for it. I paid for it and haven’t played it yet but I don’t think that balances things out very much.