I have nothing witty to say. You will enjoy this flash game.

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Great, great, great (etc) grand dad was a bad ass

Dirk spends  lot of time dead, and as much time re-purchasing ships and equipment. His is a life of run/shoot/die/repeat, like Counterstrike with spaceships. The death toll is now at eight and climbing near daily, and his kill count remains a black hole of nothingness. In fact he has yet to so much as damage anyone in PvP combat though it’s not for lack of trying. He’s had deaths in Ibis’. Deaths in Kestrels. Deaths in Rifters. Deaths in Thrashers. Deaths in pods. Rumor has it he slipped in the shower and died once too but that remains unconfirmed, and Dirk isn’t talking.

The name Dirk Plisskin came from a mix of Snake Plisskin and the Douglas Adams character Dirk Gently. It’s no surprise then that the first ship was dubbed “Dirk’s Gently” in homage to Adam’s character and it’s a naming scheme that has stuck. The inclusion of roman numerals after “Dirk’s Gently” being both a way to maintain a semblance of stability from ship to ship, and also providing a grim but realistic count of past miscalculations.

Dirk makes his home in Arnon, a nicely located and safe-enough 0.6 area just a couple of jumps from his primary scavenging sector,  a much more inhospitable 0.2 section of space that is really far, far out of his league. Warp in, kill a rat or two then empty their cargo hold, salvage the rest then run away. Run away like a man. At this point he’s a guppy amongst sharks, and his survival is 20% dependent on skill, and 80% on luck. Those numbers could get flipped if he operated back to the Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood that is high-sec of course, but Dirk Plisskin doesn’t roll that way. He craves the danger, plus being reborn as a clone every other day makes him giggle. Giggle like a man.

If you’re a pirate and you see “Dirk Plisskin” flying around in a ship called “Dirk’s Gently VIII” (as of this writing), give the guy a break. Tell him you heard he was dead, then fly on. You’ll smile, he’ll smile and you can say you cross paths with a legend.

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Sweet, with that out of way I give you Cyclomaniacs. What is it? It’s a flash game with bicycles, jumps, pickups, achievements, unlockables and all sorts of shenanigans. You will play it. You will play the hell out of it.

Yes, that's Mr. T on my bicycle... well, Mr. C actually.

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I admit to being impressed with most everything I’ve seen so far. Here’s hoping OFP2 succeeds where some other game has more or less completely fallen on it’s face.

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I wish my actual Kestral had this spiffy Hello Kitty paint job.

In short, I’m really starting to get into Eve Online. It’s starting to make sense and I’m starting to feel like I’m playing rather than just stumbling around. That said, I am of course still stumbling as detailed below and the lesson from which is… Always make sure you know where something is located before you buy it.

Lately I’ve been puttering along in my default Ibis doing some early mission story arc things for cargo hauling, and all is going well in that I’m at least absorbing things. I’m also interested enough to read a bit about the game a bit when not playing and one thing I saw was that it would be a good idea to upgrade your ship sooner rather than later. Nothing too extravagant, but something a little better than the default starting ship. I shopped around some and thought a Kestrel might be good since it can lug cargo while still being able to protect itself to some degree with all those missiles. I do like missiles.

I couldn’t afford one anywhere close by (not one I could afford to lose anyway, which is key) so being the n00b I am I went into the market and sorted the list of available Kestrels by price and bought one for a paltry $150,000 ISK “only” 9 jumps away. “Awesome!”, I thought, “I’ll just dash over there and pick it up!” How hard could that be? Straight forward trip there and back so it should be easy. Hypothetically. It was only after starting the trip that I noticed my new ship was parked in a 0.4 area. See Eve categorizes how safe an area is using this X.X notation with 1.0 being perfectly safe and 0.0 being a place you really don’t want to be as a n00b. Now even I am grizzled enough to realize that 0.4 is not 1.0 so there was some likelyhood of “action” (where action = me dying in an embarrassing manner). Despite that I went ahead undaunted, partly out of a sense of adventure and partly because I didn’t know how to get a refund on the ship I bought. I flew on.

Eight jumps later I was in 0.5 space and although I had seen the odd ship here and there, no one hassled me and I jumped the final time into 0.4 and my destination. As soon as I entered 0.4 however I was greeted by what must have been two dozen “red guys” in my list of ships and objects on the right side of the screen. Apparently these fellows all hated me a great deal from the outset. The upside of this was that I quickly got to figure out how cloning worked, and also about the value of having a good insurance plan (which I did not).

I respawned back in my home station, got handed another shitty AMC Pacer/Ibis and some complimentary ore and I resigned myself to owning a ship far away, that I wasn’t going to be able to acquire. Perhaps I would consider it my “summer ship” that I might hypothetically visit in the future sometime, despite clearly having no luck with hypotheticals to date.

This morning, I logged in to see how my skills were progressing and found Eve Offline and down for patching. While unsuccessfully spamming the launch button a few times, I resolved my intent on a cunning plan. “When the server comes back up, there likely won’t be too many people on and perhaps I can zip over and get my Kestrel unmolested.” That’s pretty cunning alright, and as it turns out it actually worked. The servers came up, I stripped my Ibis down to nothing and took off on my nine jump journey. Though I saw no one after leaving my starting system, it was a stressful trip. I didn’t breath at all for the last jump into 0.4 (where I was previously gang-raped) and it was in a mild panic that I docked, swapped ships, bought some insurance and got the hell out of Dodge. On leaving I did spot one other ship in the area, but I successfully got out and all the way back “home” again so woohoo for me.

I’m in the process of training up missile skills now, and casually looking around for launchers and whatnot. I think I’ll do my shopping a bit closer to home next time though.

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effing flash game

Happily Effing Hail satisfies on all fronts (weather related pun effing intended) by allowing you to control the weather, and in particular wind and hail. The idea is, you use wind gusts to keep small hail stones blowing around in the atmosphere. The longer they stay up there, the bigger they get and when you’re content you can let them drop on to farms, cities and what not below. Who says science isn’t fun?

Damn. It seems that I don’t have enough things to say about this game to fill up the space next to the picture I selected. Rather than resize it, or leave a blank spot in the article I’ll just ramble a bit like this.

As for the game, I completely effing approve.

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Tally ho, wot wot?

oh hell, I know I’m being overly harsh. I actually like the early flight thing, and WWI is a totally under-done era for good flight sims… and any other sort of game for that matter. You can kill Nazi’s in any number of titles, but try and kill an honest to God hun and you’re left out in the cold. We should thank Rise of Flight for that at least.

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HD version here.

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What a way to make a livin'

See, the difference between work and play is that where play gives to you, work (generally) takes. You can go play pool with your friends for as long as you like and accomplish nothing but having a good time and recharging your batteries. Forget your finances, forget the stock market, forget your job… just have a good time. Playing gives. Work on the other hand (and again, I say this in general terms) requires things of you. Get there at a certain time. Accomplish goals X,Y,Z which beyond the job you may have no interest in. Figure out the taxes, deal with customers, travel all over the place. Spend your time doing things that may be more important to others, than to you. Work takes (this train of thought may explain why I’m self-employed).

Using those admittedly general outlines, Eve Online isn’t a game so much as a job. I didn’t want to go through the tutorials, but I sort of had to. Not because there was no option to skip them, but because without them I’d have been totally lost. In fact I’m still partially lost after having done the tutorials. Once I was through that, I sat there in space with the “invisible Dad” standing over my shoulder asking me what I want to do with my life. Get a job. Find some work. Buy. Sell. Consume. Make something of yourself. Climb the ladder. Start a business. Grow the business. Make deals. Break deals. It goes on and on, and it’s all me giving to the game as opposed to the game giving to me. There should be an in-game option to just park your ship somewhere and go play Peggle or read a book.

The reward for all this “work” is of course a more involving experience, a “second life” (to use the term) in this giant multiplayer universe where you can live how you want, and maybe be someone else for awhile. The problem is, If I wanted to put a lot of energy into succeeding in business or into excelling at various areas of life I’d do so in my life, not some alternate reality game life. When I play games I don’t want to give, I want to be given to. I want to be challenged and entertained, but I don’t want to have to go through weeks of effort to get it. I don’t want instant gratification necessarily, but at the same time I don’t want to turn my free time into a chore. After a single play session, Eve Online feels like a chore.

That said, I really do see the promise. I can totally see how hooking up with some like minded people and growing a corporation could be an awesome experience. I can see how the entire player driven economy is unique and engaging. I can see how exploration (if not combat) carries a great sense of accomplishment and reward as you gain more and more, and grow your character and ship over time. I can also see the promise in being a brain surgeon, but the time and effort required to become a brain surgeon is a bit more than I’m after in my free time.

I’ll absolutely give Eve another shot (or several more shots) in the hopes that something will click. I’ll either get a promotion and start enjoying the job, or quit and go on gamng welfare. Update to follow at some point.

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