League of Legends

League of Legends, a game that I have played a lot of recently, has begun a referral program.

If you've enjoyed my blog and figured you would try out League of Legends based on my tiny blog post about it, feel free to click on this link to have me listed as your referrer. I would appreciate it a lot!

This is my referral link:

https://signup.leagueoflegends.com?ref=4b4e3b63f39bf

Penumbra: Overture

I had started this game when I was gifted it by my husband around the same time he gifted me LOOM. I had never heard of it or played it. (Geeze, was I living under a rock or something when it came to these games?!)

Anyways, the idea interested me because I do enjoy scary games and apparently this was a psychologically scary one.

The artwork is really nice in this game.

A lot of dazzling beautiful pictures do not make a game though so once the gameplay started, I was excited.

Just for the record, I find it amusing when games take this approach in introducing a player how to use the controls:

(I had to make this one bigger so you could read what it said)

Anyways, so you find yourself in a snowy cold area trying to figure out your father's notes. The game starts you in the middle of a snowy area looking for shelter. You get into the sheltered area and that is when weird stuff starts happening which adds to the psychological thriller aspect of the game.

Here are some screenshots I took:

By this point, I had been playing the game for 3 hours and I was only halfway through it. I had to keep taking breaks every 20 minutes or so because I kept getting sick to my stomach. I decided at this point I would take a break and return to it later.

Two days later I came back to the game to finish.

I had been stuck running around zombie dogs that kept killing me. It frustrated the hell out of me and once I killed the last dog, I kept swinging my pick axe at it screaming victoriously.

I was able to figure out the next couple of situational "puzzles" and then I had to quit because by this time I was feeling really queasy. My husband watched me play and said that it was probably the bobbing motion that happens when I moved my character (walking/running).

I haven't beat it yet because it makes me ill to play, but I figured I would update my blog this week to let you know that I am still playing different games.

My observations? The sound effects are rather nice and the graphics are very pretty to look at. It was hard at first to center the items I wanted to use in the middle of the screen, but as time went on I was able to do it. (You have to do this in order to manipulate them with an eyeball or hand). There are parts in the game where you use a weapon (like a pick axe for example) to kill some beasties and that frustrated me to no end because the swing would be erratic. One second I'd swing like a pro and then I'd try to do the same swing again, utter failure. And I can confirm I did the mouse tapping/moving the exact same way. Not a fan. After playing for 30 minutes, I started to feel sick in my stomach and had to take a break. The only other game to do this to me was Doom 3.

Overall, nice game though I probably wouldn't really recommend it to people unless they want to try a game that has a good psychological suspense/horror atmosphere in it.

LOOM

I've always been a big fan of adventure games. Growing up, I would watch my father play them on our old IBM Compatible PC. He would play them and then when he beat them, he'd let my sisters and I play them. I grew up playing classics like the Quest collection from Sierra (King's Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest) and others like Leisure Suit Larry and Quest of the Longbow. I never really imagined that there were other games like them not made by Sierra.

Fast forward about 20 years. I'm sitting at home and I'm angry and upset for some reason. My husband decides to brighten my day by gifting me this game on STEAM.

You start off as this guy, Bobbin Threadbare, who has to go down to speak with the Elders about something. Then he finds out he is abandoned because he is special and one of the Elders named Mother Hetchel decides to help him.

You travel to many awesome places. Like....

A cool huge tent that has pillars! (the opening to it is a tent... and apparently the rest of it is underground... or something)

It also has many different tapestries.

You get to travel on the ocean with only a tree as a raft.

And get to see some green city called ... Crystalguard. Or something like that.

Anyways, the staff on the bottom of the screen is Bobbin's staff that he found at the beginning of the game. With this staff, he can weave objects around him to do different useful things. In order to do this, the objects give him a tiny little melody. The game shows the melody on the stick, ah-like so:

The voice acting is awesome and the storyline is pretty good. I wish I had played this game sooner! As a music educator, my ear training came in handy for the little melodies, but I still wrote them down so I could look back on them later. I am sure had I played this when I was a kid, I would have absolutely loved it!

It's a very pretty game and for $5, you really can't beat it. Entertaining story, great music by Tchaikovsky, and wonderful voice acting. I also didn't have too much trouble with the game mechanics (you really just use the mouse to click on items or where to go so it isn't confusing or hard to learn). Definitely recommended to play!