A Fool and His Money Are Soon Parted
By ahoodedfigure 11 Comments
Fool's Errand
I've been in a more retro mood than usual of late after playing some of my older games, including the fine Ultima Underworld series and Machiavelli: The Prince.
While looking around on classic gaming sites (including revisiting the new Cinemaware homepage) I noticed that Cliff Johnson's diabolical puzzler Fool's Errand, along with some of his other games, are free for download from his website.
It's also cool to note that he's in the process of designing a sequel to Fool's Errand called The Fool and his Money, which he says he'll complete by the end of this year.
Other Kinds of Fool's Errands
In personal gameplay news, I've completed all the lunar quests in the usually fun but at times very annoying Lunar Caves in FFIV GBA. There's one quest in particular, Kain's, which was probably the single most frustrating experience of the entire game, where you have to go through a linear sequence, clicking on stuff, for something close to 20 minutes before you're forced to fight a boss by yourself. AND, if you're not paying attention to the clicks, you may accidentally hit the wrong dialog choice, like I did, and have to start the whole damned thing over! Not fun, especially after the first time.
As far as Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, I managed somehow to collect every soul. I may not have gotten every item, but at this point... don't wanna. I wish the game let you play as all the different characters and used THAT as an excuse to limit you to items you've so far collected, or souls, but I guess they figured they were being generous enough as it is. On the whole I enjoyed it, but the promise of the game seemed to end early, even though the content within it still lay waiting to be discovered.
Otherwise, won't be playing much XBox until we get a TV that doesn't freak out if it gets loud noises or bright colors. Looks like it's time to go LCD... Not looking forward to it, since most LCD screens I've seen look like ass.
ClueSweeper, and General Cluelessness
Those interested in playing an alternative to Minesweeper that isn't nearly as irritating and has a nice theme might want to try ClueSweeper.
And while I'm on the topic of Minesweeper, I remember there being a local color news story late at night about some entrepreneur who promised to give an up-and-coming programmer a large cash award if he or she could provide a foolproof program for solving the game. Problem is, while the game purports to be one of pure logic, when you get down to the wire and are forced to choose between two spots that are both likely to contain a mine, with no other spaces around them with numbers to show what might be there, it comes down to luck (or, if you ask Ben Kenobi, the Force I guess). Either the guy offering the prize was ignorant of the game, or he KNEW no one would be able to beat it reliably, and got some free publicity from press groups who weren't into that whole fact-checking thing.
Zen Stuff
It also seems that the MMORPG Ryzom has gone open source. They've tried doing a few things differently (like having animals you hunt actually having behavior patterns instead of standing around waiting to be killed, and having something other than the generic fantasy setting). If more people get into it as a result, especially since it works on older machines, I'm fine with it. And apparently they also maintain a commercial server for those who still want to play officially.
Oh, and I tried pOnd, but I guess I lack the patience because the game went black, indirectly told me I sucked, and wouldn't let me restart. Not a very forgiving game!