Because the internet needs another gaming blog.

The stage was set over lunch two days ago. The plan was for me to meet Joe and Marc in Ventrilo once my daughter was in bed and asleep. We would then proceed to slaughter each other over a virtual World War II battle field in Company of Heroes. Because Marc is the RTS game expert, he would be paired with a computer player set on easy difficulty, while Joe and I would form a heroic alliance of heroes tasked with destroying the evil-doers. I couldn’t wait. The rest of the day was spent engaging in psychological warfare, bombarding Marc with propaganda, reminding him that neither Joe or I were any good at RTS games, we were new to CoH, Joe didn’t know how to do anything, that sort of stuff. Which was all true of course, but we may have played it up a little bit; Joe and I have a tendency to exaggerate at times.

With my daughter in bed, I hurried downstairs to my computer room like a kid on Christmas morning. Upon logging on to Ventrilo I discovered that Marc and Joe were already playing a 1 vs 1 game, and it didn’t sound as though things were going well for my alliance partner. It took just a few more minutes for them to finish their game, and sure enough, Joe was “slaughtered”. Marc was living up to his reputation as RTS King, or perhaps Joe was just living up to his reputation as all-around failure. Most likely it was a mixture of both. Regardless, with their game done, we quickly got to setting up our epic battle, choosing the Lyon map because it had a nice mixture of open and urban spaces, with a river running right down the middle. It was apparent right at the start that control of the four bridges would be key, at least that’s what every war movie I have ever seen told me.

Playing as the Americans, I started out in the very top of the map with Joe to my left. As soon as I got my bearings I started spitting out some engineers and sent a few of them to capture some resource points. Beyond that, I struggled to figure out what to do next. I had been playing as the Wehrmacht in my skirmishes leading up to this game, and the mechanics behind their play is slightly different. It was two minutes into the game and I already felt like I was behind everyone else, but I soldiered on. A squad of engineers that I had sent out soon discovered enemy territory to the right of the map, just across the northern bridge. There were two undefended enemy resource points in the area which I set my engineers to capturing. They came under fire from some German infantry (it wasn’t until after the game that I found out it was Marc as opposed to the computer) before they could capture the first point and were wiped out soon thereafter. The first shots of battle had been fired, and the war had begun.

The north bridge became my primary objective, and I started pumping out units to reinforce my front line. While that last sentence sounds impressively war-like, and “Great General-ish”, in reality I was panicking and saying in my head, “oh no! I lost the bridge, they’re going to be coming any second, I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die,” as I frantically clicked on my build buttons to get some units out in the field. A steady stream of my infantry, along with some heavy machine guns took position on my side of the bridge. I was soon joined by several of Joe’s units as well. For what seemed like an eternity, we battled over control of the bridge. Marc would send some units over it only to have them blown apart by the mines I had set, or gunned down by the heavy machine guns fortified in the nearby house. Any American attempts of crossing the bridge met with a similar response from Marc. I continued to fortify my side of the bridge, placing sandbags, more mines, and even a machine gun bunker. I soon assembled a raid force consisting of three tanks, some infantry, two mortar squads, and two anti-tank guns and began to shell Marc’s side of the bridge with mortar fire and ordered my tanks to cross the bridge. Hidden in the fog of war however, Marc unleashed a Nebelwerfer (rocket artillery) which rained fiery destruction upon the bridge. While two of my tanks managed to make it across the bridge, the third was destroyed right in the middle. The ensuing explosion took out the bridge entirely, as can be seen in the picture. With the bridge wiped out, my two tanks were left to fend for themselves in enemy territory while I brought some engineers up to rebuild the bridge.

While I fought it out with Marc in the north, Joe was having great success in the south. Joe’s offensive push down below shifted the German attention away from my forces in the north and I was quickly able to assemble another raid force and bring them across the newly rebuilt north bridge. Marc’s army was the first to fall, after Joe’s tanks reduced his HQ to rubble. After that, it was only a matter of time for the combined might of the American army to eliminate the computer. We all had a blast and decided to play another quick game.

Joe’s efforts in the first game proved his duplicitous nature, and as a result, he was paired with the computer, this time on normal difficulty, for the second match. We chose a different map, I can’t remember which one, but it was much more open. Marc and I, playing as the Americans had great starting locations unlike Joe and the computer who were stuck practically on top of each other. This second game went relatively quickly. I made enemy contact within a couple minutes and the fighting was fairly constant from that point on. Despite multiple pushes, I was consistently repelled by the combined forces of Joe and the computer. During one of my pushes, which once again was being repelled, I sent a message to Marc indicating I was having some difficulties on the left side of the map. His response was a simple, “I’m coming,” backed up by several tanks, mortars, and plenty of infantry. We now had both the computer and Joe pinned into one corner of the map where we blasted their forces and buildings. The picture shows Marc’s army, backed up by one of my mortar squads, beginning the final assault on Joe’s base. I think it’s fair to say that Joe put up a good fight given the disadvantage the map gave him.

So now it looks like our next game will pair me up with the computer, unless we can convince one other person to get the game and participate. Whatever the case, I’m looking forward to it, because this game is nothing but fun.

I played a couple games of Company of Heroes last night with work buddies Joe and Marc. I’ll have a full write up of how the games went tonight or tomorrow, but in the mean time, what you’ll find below is an actual E-mail conversation we had today, copied word for word, trying to convince our other buddy Brian to get in on the CoH action so we can have proper 2 vs. 2 matches.

To: Brian
From: David (That’s me!)

Hey Brian, how interested are you in buying Company of Heroes (Game of the Year edition just $19.99) and playing with myself, Joe, and Marc?

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To: David, Joe, Marc
From: Brian

Hmm, sounds interesting. Maybe I’ll pick it up then. Do you guys have it already? Also, what’s up for lunch tomorrow?

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To: Brian, David, Marc
From: Joe

Yes we all bought Game of the Year edition. We played it together last night. It was super fun.

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To: David, Joe, Marc
From: Brian

The problem with us playing RTS games is that we all know Marc is going to win. It’s all a matter of who comes in second. I have the day off tomorrow and should be back by lunch time if you guys wanna meet somewhere.

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To: Brian, David, Marc
From: Joe

Actually, Dave and I won the first game over Marc and the Computer. Dave and Marc completely obliterated me and the CPU the 2nd match. We usually go for lunch at 11:30. So just show up and we’ll decide whatever.

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To: Joe, Brian, David
From: Marc

In my defence…THE COMPUTER SUCKS!!!

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To: Marc, Joe, Brian
From: David

Yet, the computer lasted longer than you.

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To: David, Joe, Brian
From: Marc
…
1) You thought you were fighting the PC the whole game…when in reality…it was ME!
2) Joe was a cheap ass…stupid artillery…GOD!

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To: Marc, Joe, Brian
From: David

1) I thought I was fighting the PC the whole time because quite frankly, I thought you were supposed to be good at this game
2) Joe is a cheap ass, and always will be. He is not God.

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To: David, Joe, Brian
From: Marc

1) noob
2) shut up…

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To: Marc, Joe, Brian
From: David

1) My poop
2) Your mouth

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To: David, Joe, Brian
From: Marc

Anways…It’s a good investment Brian. The graphics are great and the game play can be compared to Generals / Dawn of War although the controls are a bit better…These fools love tanks, that’s all that Joe gets.

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To: Marc, David, Joe
From: Brian

It looks like fun. I read that the resources are not harvested? You accumulate them over time depending on the territory you control? On a side note, I should probably stop using my work email for this, so from now on, send everything to <email address> kthx.

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Perhaps I should go into marketing or something.

While my motivation to play EQII has been waning of late, the urge hit me last night, so for the first time in a while I logged in. My Mystic Elrahir, is nearing the end of the quests in the Fens and I have never really been in Kunzar Jungle, so that’s where I headed. Of course, everything was kill on sight right away, so I had to carefully make my way to some quest givers to build up some faction. It only took one simple quest to no longer be kill on sight in the first village I came across, which gave me access to yet more quests. So, off I went to kill some Tigers, and Sabrecats, and whatever else my quest journal had tasked me to kill. It probably took about twenty minutes for me to realize I just wasn’t having any fun, so rather than push myself to continue, I sent an instant message to my work buddy Marc to see if he wanted to play Company of Heroes.

In my previous post, it was my other work buddy Joe who I was going to battle for CoH supremecy, but he was too chicken (that’s right, brawk, braaawwwk!) to log out of his EQII safety net, using the “I’m raiding” excuse. Marc however, couldn’t log out of World of Warcraft fast enough, he was so eager to get some CoH on. I gave myself precisely zero percent chance at beating Marc. For starters, he’s played CoH before, while I’ve only played a few skirmishes against the computer the past week. Secondly, he’s a real-time strategy game freak, posessing the ever important uber-micro skills. It was probably about two years ago now, that I was playing Rise of Nations a fair bit, to the point where I thought I was pretty good at it. I convinced Marc to pick the game up and give it a go. I figured I was going to slaughter him pretty good, what with him never having played the game before. Sadly, that was not the case. Apparently, RTS skills are fairly universal, and while I got off to a decent start, Marc eventually steamrolled over top of my army. So, knowing Marc had played CoH before, I was fully prepared to bow down in defeat.

I was set up to play as the Wehrmacht, while Marc played the Americans. As soon as the match started I set my pioneers off on their merry way. It didn’t take long for me to have control of half the map, and the resources were coming in at a steady pace. I had set up some stationary MG42s and mortar units at some of the chokepoints, more as an “early warning system” than a defensive strongpoint. Our first little skirmish occurred between some infantry in the middle of the map, where my Volksgrenadiers proved their worth, wiping out the American squad. Not long after however, Marc sent some troops down my west flank, which conveniently enough for him, hadn’t been reinforced. Immediately after wresting control of one of my strategic points his squad ran straight into my newly deployed Panther Panzer (pictured). The Americans tried to run, but they couldn’t run fast enough, and within seconds my Panzer had obliterated them. I quickly re-took the strategic points and began to push forward. I have to admit, I smiled a little knowing full well that I took Marc by surprise. I was pretty sure he didn’t have any tanks at the time, so I’m assuming I sent him into a bit of a panic. Unfortunately, this moment would end up being my downfall.

With a renewed sense of confidence, I pushed my tank forward just as a second Panther was deployed. Marc, seasoned RTS veteran that he is, started deploying some anti-tank units. Crap. I forgot about those. Thinking that I had a good chance at an offensive, I focused entirely on my two tanks, forgetting about the rest of my production. It took just a few shots from the stupid, cheating, cheap-shot anti-tank guys to put me on the defensive. I started pulling back what units I had as the dirty Americans surged forward. The writing was on the wall as the American artillery rained fiery destruction down upon my positions. My production began to stall as Marc overtook strategic, and resource points as he pushed forward. I pressed my brave soldiers to fight to the death, and die they did. It wasn’t long before the Americans had my headquarters surrounded, pummeling it with all they had. I called in a Tiger tank reinforcement which managed to take on two American Sherman tanks, but eventually succumbed to more artillery fire. With that, my last stance, the game was over. The picture shows Marc pummeling away at my HQ next to the wreckage of my Tiger tank.

Despite getting my butt handed to me, I had an absolute blast. This is one fun game, and the graphical presentation of it is phenomenal. Joe says he’ll play tonight… we’ll see.

What do you get when you put two Real-time Strategy noobs that have a penchant for trash talking in front of Company of Heroes?  You get a throwdown on an epic level of mediocrity, that’s what.

A little backstory… I was working hard at my desk yesterday, just like I always do, when the new mail icon popped up in my system tray.  It turns out that the mail was from Joe, and much to my chagrin, appeared to be of a non-work-related nature.  Of course I considered deleting the mail instantly without reading it, because, as I’m sure you know, the workplace is no place for discussing anything fun, and it’s just not something I like to engage in *cough* *cough*.  My curiousity was piqued however, so I opened it up. It seems Joe wanted to initiate a discussion on real-time strategy games, asking “what will get you playing an RTS nowadays?”  He hypothesized that the genre was losing people and wondered if Starcraft 2 will be its saviour.

Much discussion ensued between myself, Joe and our other “work buddy” who we’ll call Marc.  It seemed to me that for a while it felt like RTS games were the only games being made.  I burned out on them very quickly, with the original Starcraft being the last one I really played.  I dabbled a bit in Age of Empires 2 and Rise of Nations, but certainly not to any great extent.  I really only enjoyed playing RTS games multiplayer, but there’s no way I could compete with the freakish uber-micro skills of those players on the internet so I moved on to other genres and left RTS games behind.  I suggested to the “work buddies” that perhaps we should have a scheduled game night every week where we choose a game, play against each other, and shoot the breeze over Ventrilo.

We all seemed to agree, at least Joe and I did, that we didn’t like how most RTS games seem to come down to who can hit their macro keys the fastest and rush up the tech trees first, rather than who actually had the best strategy.  We eventually started talking about some newer games which we heard were good and while out for lunch at the mall across the street, which just so happens to have a game store in it, we came across Company of Heroes for $19.99.  It was pretty much a foregone conclusion that once we started talking about trying out some of the RTS games we were discussing, that we’d end up buying one of them, and twenty dollars seemed like a decent price for a game that we all heard was really good.  I was sold.  Unfortunately, the store only had one copy, so our dreams of glorious multiplayer battles were squashed for the time being.

Undeterred however, I made some phone calls as soon as I got back to my desk, and discovered that another nearby store had two copies of Company of Heroes (Game of the Year Edition) also for $19.99.  Giddy-up!

So that brings me back to the present.  I’m pumped and ready to do battle, and Joe will be the target of my Company of Heroes fury.  Neither of us has played the game before, and it’s been a long time since either of us have played an RTS, so it isn’t going to be pretty.  But rest assured, that once we schedule a time to play, there will be some fireworks, and you’ll be able to read all about it right here.  I may even let Joe write a post or two here so you can all see things from the loser’s perspective.  Oh yeah, it is officially on!

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Without making an entire blog post about it, I just wanted to mention that I’m sick and tired of copy protection on PC games.  After installing COH last night, I launched the game and was immediately prompted to install the latest patch in order to play multiplayer.  It was getting late and I just wanted to check the single-player game out so I said “no” to the patch.  I was then asked to sign up for a Relic account so I could “always be online” with COH.  Again, I just wanted to quickly check the game out so I looked for where I could get to the main menu.  Well, it turns out my only options were to log in with a current account, or exit the game; I couldn’t even create a new account as the button was greyed out.  There was no way to get to the main menu.  I re-launched the game and downloaded the multiplayer patch when prompted which was 114 MB.  Patching the game enabled the create a new account button, which I did, and was then taken to the main menu.  Why the heck was I forced to patch the game, and then create an online account, before I could get to main menu?  It’s things like this, and the stupidness that was the Bioshock activation that is driving more and more gamers to the consoles where I can just put in my disk, power on the system, and play.
 

I had a busy weekend in the “real world” so I didn’t get much time to play Vanguard, but in the time I did have I managed to get to level 11, oh yeah, end-game here I come!  I’ve enjoyed the quests so far, even though they have mostly been of the “kill x number of creature y” variety, the story behind them is at least engaging enough to keep my interest.  After choosing which version of Jin (light or dark) I was going to follow, I was set off on a series of trials to prove my worthiness.  While doing some of the quests I came across the Spawn of Kojuko who was kind enough to pose for my screenshot before charging at me.  I turned tail and ran like a true warrior would.  He managed one swipe at me which knocked my health bar down to a sliver, but that just made me run faster and I managed to escape.

In one of the trials I was teleported to the top of a very high mountain overlooking Tanvu, and was supposed to talk with a Lao’Jin master, Master Chuun.  The view from the top of the mountain was incredible so I just had to look around and perhaps grab a screenshot or two before speaking with the Master.  I could almost see the entire island from where I was, including the city of Tanvu far below.  I inched my way closer to the edge of the mountain for a better look, but I apparently inched a little too far forward as I fell off the edge and began plummeting towards the ground below.  I uttered an “oh crap” but just then my quest updated with a ding and I successfully completed Chuun’s trial.  I never did speak to him, so I’ll just assume his trial was going to ask me to put my faith in Jin and jump off the mountain.

A little later on, while walking around doing some quests near Magi Hold, I came across Kagero Skyhoof, Pegasus Master.  After talking with her I learned that I could rent a Pegasus for ten minutes at a cost of ten silver.  I did a quick inventory check to find that I had 22 silver, and 98 copper to my name.  Ten silver was feeling like a lot of money, but this was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.

The ten minutes literally flew by, pun intended.  I ended up flying south to Ca’ial Brael and saw some pretty cool stuff along the way such as Jalen’s Crossing, the giant bridge pictured.  The ten minutes expired just as I was flying over Ca’ial Brael which is a gorgeous looking city.

I then headed west from Ca’ial Brael to Tawar Galan which is right on the coast.  I found a mount vendor nearby and decided to spend what little money I had left on a Young Dusky Brown Horse which left me with four copper in my pockets.  I had a long journey back to Tanvu though, so I figured it’d be worth it.  Hey, who doesn’t like having a horse?  The horse I bought is the slowest one available, but it’s still pretty cool trotting around on a horse.  I made my way back to Jalen’s Crossing where I found a teleporter which zapped me back to Tanvu which is right where I needed to be for my next set of quests.  I happened to see in the out of character chat that at around level fifteen or so I may be ready to explore some of the other continents, so I’m looking forward to that.  I may even get brave enough in the coming days to try grouping, but I’ll have to see, because I still feel like a complete noob in this game.