As is likely obvious, Lungfishopolis is kind of dead. It never had much of an audience, and as such it existed primarily as a creative outlet for me. I’ve moved my musings on video games mostly to Google Plus posts. If you’re interested in participating in those discussions and you’re not already in my Google Plus video games circle, shoot me an email via GregHowley.com and I’ll add you.

The things I always liked most about Lungfishopolis were its design and the cool gamercard plugin I programmed for the left sidebar. I love the randomized headers with my face in profile at the left of each, I love the randomized video game character at the lower left, and I love the fake google map at the bottom with street names based off of video game character names. More so than the content, I’m proud of this site’s design.

But I’m going to be letting the domain expire. I had fun with Lungfishopolis, and now it’s time for it to go. Farewell, Lungfishopolis!

It’s been nearly two weeks since I last played Skyrim, but while I was playing I was completely absorbed in the game, as I’d known I would be. 146 hours I put into that game, and I feel fairly certain that I’ll be going back to it in maybe a year or so, once some of the better mods have come out.

I did enjoy Skyrim a lot, but I can’t help but feel that it wasn’t as good as Oblivion in a number of ways. Sure, the graphics were an improvement. That’s a function of the improved hardware between 2007 and 2011. They also got rid of Oblivion’s lame conversation wheel mini-game. But I can’t help but feel that alchemy was much more useful and more fun in Oblivion – I’m not sure why they changed it at all. Skyrim’s perk tree was a vast improvement over the 25/50/75/100 perk schema in Oblivion, and Bethesda was smart to get rid of the weird major and minor skill system that caused such a leveling paradox in Oblivion. I also really liked the new lockpicking system. It was almost too easy at times, but that’s much better than being too difficult.

My primary gripe with Skyrim, and the reason that I preferred Oblivion, was due to the nature of the game’s main plot. In Oblivion, the world was being invaded by the demonic Daedra through horrific gaping red magical gates, and it was the player’s job to save the world by venturing into a realm that might as well have been Hell. It was epic. In Skyrim, the plot involves killing dragons because they’re kind of mean. Sure – there’s one big powerful dragon who’s extra mean and must be stopped, but the threat seems nebulous and so relatively minor. The dragons in Skyrim were never as much of a threat as the Daedra were in Oblivion. Plus, even though the main dragon will have been defeated at the conclusion of Skyrim’s main plot, there are still many powerful dragons in evidence, attacking just as much as they ever were. How much has actually been resolved?

My last gripe with Skyrim is mainly geared towards the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild plots. Although there are ostensibly unlimited quests in Skyrim, the game’s foremost quest lines are the main story, the civil war, the Wizard’s College, the Thieves Guild, the Dark Brotherhood, and the Companions. That’s six questlines, and two of them are really only available if you choose to be at least partially evil. And while I’m not at all opposed to games that allow you to be evil, I find it odd that large sections of content are entirely closed off unless your character is a cold-blooded murderer or thief. Two out of six questlines is a third of the game’s non-random content, although it’s actually less since the main quest likely has far more content than other quest lines. Personally, playing as a sneak sniper is my favorite way to play Skyrim, so it’s ironic that the Dark Brotherhood is the only quest line I never touched.

So I’m still playing the crap out of Skyrim. Last night I got to try out the new high resolution texture pack, which looks just amazing, and the new mod management system, which doesn’t seem to integrate very well with mods that may have been installed before its implementation – I got about three crash-to-desktop errors last night.

I’ve just finished reading about Bethesda’s “Skyrim Game Jam”, where they let the developers create anything they wanted for a week. They came up with some amazing sounding stuff. I already use mods to improve the UI and the look of water, fire, ice, and lighting. I even use the Midas Magic mod which adds spells to the game. But check this out.

• Stealth Enhancements
  From what I gather, there are some fans of the thief series at Bethesda. They’ve modded stuff to allow for the creation of Thief-style water arrows and guards that relight darkened areas. Considering how I play the game, this is my #1 mod. I love it.
• Dark dungeons
  This one has been on my mod wishlist since day one. I’ve tried a number of mods to darken nights and dungeons, but none have done it well. This would fit nicely with the stealth enhancements.
• Goblins
  Another one from my wishlist. Yes, please!
• Seasonal Foliage
  Very nice. This would be subtle, but I think I’d really like it.
• Spears
  The game could use more weapons. All they’ve got are swords, axes, maces, and daggers. Spears are wielded completely differently, and so this requires new character animations as well as new weapon art. It’s more of a project than you might realize, but I think it sounds great.
• Mounted combat
  Another big one. Attacking from horseback would be epic.
• Dragon mounts
  Whaa? Even in the game’s main plot when you fly on the back of a dragon, they fudge the effect. If they can pull this off, it will be amazing.
• Dungeon enhancements : handing structures and moving platforms
  Whoa. This sounds like it would create platforming in dungeons. Perhaps a bit too late for anything but add-on DLC, but it sounds cool.
• Fat giants
  Haha. Sounds good.
• Ice and Fire arrows
  Why not?
• Werebear
  Interesting. Just a reskin of the werewolf, I’d imagine.
• Lycanthropy skill tree
  Wow. A whole new skill tree. Considering how useless the werewolf form is, I’ll take it.
• Vampire Feeding
  I didn’t realize that this wasn’t already in place, having never been a vampire.
• Become a flying vampire lord
  Flying? Wow. This I would try.
• Vampire Imp Minions
  Imps were another monster from my wishlist.
• “Waygates” for fast travel
  Considering that fast travel already exists, I’m not sure of the point, but I’m willing to check it out.
• Flow-based water shader
  This could look really nice.
• Kill Cams for Magic and Ranged Combat
  I hadn’t thought about the fact that they don’t exist, but… they don’t exist. Adding them would be nice.
• Paralysis runes
  This must be high-level, but I’d use it often. Paralysis is the most powerful magic in the game.
• Water currents in dungeons
  I’d go for a mod just to strengthen all water currents. I’ve barely ever been pushed by water.
• New commands for followers: Combat style, set favorite equipment, etc.
  I use followers so rarely that I probably wouldn’t notice.
• Adopt a child
  Seems cruel, given that I’d be away adventuring so much that you’d have to categorize me as criminally neglectful.
• Build your own home
  I’m not quite sure how this would work, but I’m interested. Apparently, you can also have a skeleton butler. Personally, I’d prefer a monkey butler, but I’ll take what I can get.
• Spell combinations: Use flame and raise zombie to create a fire zombie
  Holy crap. Like Magicka? If they create enough combinations, this could be amazing.
• High-level Draugrs
  More powerful undead? Sure, why not?
• Epic mounts (flaming death horse)
  Seems a bit over-the-top for my taste.
• Kinect voice-activated shouts
  I still plan to try Thu’uMic,  but I think it’s awesome that someone is bringing this to the XBox. My console friends should be able to get some mod love too.
• Enhanced underwater visuals
  Sure. 
• Screen space ambient occlusion
  What?
• Giant mudcrab enemy
  Can I attack it for massive damage?

I’ll be watching closely for implementation of these features. If you’re interested, you can watch the video here.

I’ve just encountered a disheartening example of corporate personhood. The argument against piracy is primarily that the creators of a given work should continue to receive recompense for that work. Pirates deprive them of that profit. Do you know what else deprives them of the same profit? Publishers who come into ownership of their IP. While I think it’s terrible that anyone should pirate a game and short the creators, I don’t have much empathy for the large corporate entities that buy up game rights, profiting from them strictly as commodities.

Why am I even bringing this up? Machine Studios has just laid out a list of PC games for which the creators are no longer receiving any compensation. The list includes a lot of my favorites: The Thief series, Dungeon Keeper, the Icewind Dale series, Arcanum, Fallout 2, and Mechwarrior 4. Luckily, I still have my CD copies of all of these games hanging out in a box in my attic. But whereas I might have been tempted to add an extra copy of one of these to my Steam account simply for convenience, this revelation has ensured that I’ll be going back to the copies I’ve got on CD. I don’t have copies of the Deus Ex series or Planescape: Torment, which are also on that list, but I can do without those. I didn’t enjoy either nearly as much as everyone else seems to have. And if I’m ever feeling particularly macochistic and want to replay Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, I’m going to EBay.

I’m not sure whether I can technically call this a postmortem, since I’m going to continue to play the game, but I finished Skyrim’s main plot last night. Not only did I finish the main story, but I found 20 shouts, read 50 skill books, got married, and I’m the guildmaster of the Thieves’ Guild. You see, I’m going for 100% completion on the game’s achievements. I believe I’ve got most of the harder ones at this point, but on my second runthrough I’ve got to focus on the Wizard, Companions, and the Dark Brotherhood storylines, which I pretty much ignored my first time through. I’ve also got to get all the Daedric artifacts, which I expect to be the toughest remaining achievement. I got something like 13 of them during my first playthrough, but I screwed up on two and wasn’t able to get them. I’ll have to be very careful next time.

I’m going to start a new character, since my current character is level 51, and the game is no longer much of a challenge. This time I plan to focus on the skills I neglected with my first character: pickpocketing, heavy armor, and blacksmithing. I’d like to try out 2-handed weapons as well, but there’s a perk that enables slow motion when you block with a shield, and I’d really like to try that one.

So tonight, in my hour or so of free time, I get to hunt for some new mods to install in prep for my new character. Looking forward to it.

So Capcom just confirmed Resident Evil 6, due to come out on November 20. Great! I’ve played each of the numbered Resident Evil games to completion and loved them all, even if I’ve found all the even-numbered games to be superior. I’m hoping that RE6 is also awesome.

Not that it matters, but here’s a quick no-BS bullet point list of what I want when I play a Resident Evil game.

• BOWs. That means moaning, flesh-eating zombies rather than Ganados.
• I don’t want to be able to run while I shoot, but I want the down-and-button quick-turn. Resident Evil is not run-and-gun. It’s stop-and-pop.
• Jump scares. Lots of jump scares. Some people don’t like them. I am not some people.
• No mandatory suicidal AI companion. Shiva drove me insane.
• Set up the unspoken rules, and then break them. Kind of like Resident Evil 2 did when the T-103 zombie came through the wall and then pursued you from room to room.
• More zombies.

And that’s it.

At this point, I’m sick of writing about 2011 games, and I’m sure you’re sick of reading about them, so I’ll wrap it all up. I did a best of 2010 post last year, and now here’s this year’s best of 2011 post.

In my number five position is Bastion. The game had stellar music, some very nice retro gameplay with a great mechanic for adjusting difficulty, and a compelling story. If you’ve not played Bastion, jump on it.

Number four is Portal 2, which if you’d have asked me earlier in 2011, I’d have sworn would be in my number one slot come year end. That speaks to the awesomesauce that was the 2011 video game release schedule. Portal 2 was damn funny and had some excellent puzzles. I plan to go back to it when my Skyrim frenzy cools, both to finish my second playthrough and to finish the co-op levels.

The third slot is claimed by an unexpected gem: Atom Zombie Smasher. I love this game, and I go back to it frequently when I’ve got fifteen minutes to kill. It’s not quite tower defense, not quite real time strategy, and not quite a board game. But it is fantastic.

Number two? Skyrim. Big surprise. Not much more to say here – I’m sure I’ll fill up many other posts with Skyrim blabber.

And my favorite game of the year? Batman: Arkham City. The context-sensitive combat, the open world navigation, and by Grabthar’s hammer, the characters! Epic voice acting, well-written story, incredibly fun set pieces, and one of the best endings of any video game I’ve played make Arkham City my personal game of the year.

Here’s a summary of how I rated all the games throughout my posts

Atom Zombie Smasher (A)
A Boy and His Blob (B-)
Batman: Arkham Asylum  (A)
Bastion (B+)
Batman: Arkham City (A)
Beyond Good and Evil HD (B+)
Dead Nation  (C)
Dead Space 2  (B)
Dungeon Siege 3  (C+)
Dungeons & Dragons Tactics (B)
Fallout: New Vegas  (C)
Limbo   (B)
Mass Effect 2   (B)
Metal Gear Solid 1  (C-)
Metal Gear Solid 4  (C-)
Metro 2033   (C-)
Metroid Prime   (C-)
Osmos    (B)
PB Winterbottom  (B)
Peggle Android  (B)
Pixeljunk Monsters Deluxe (A)
Plants vs Zombies Android (B+)
Portal 2  (A)
RE: Darkside Chronicles(C)
Sacred 2  (D)
Shadow of the Colossus HD (B)
Skyrim   (A)
Starcraft 2   (B)
Steel Storm   (B-)
Super Mario Galaxy 2  (B)
Wind Waker   (A-)
Zuma’s Revenge  (A-)

Many people have written off their Wii as a dead console. Probably most of the people who haven’t are the ones playing Skyward Sword or the ones still stuck on Wii Sports. At our house, the Wii game that sees the most play is Super Mario Galaxy 2. From the beginning, I’ve played the whole game through with my four-year-old daughter. She controls the player 2 star, and she’s actually a huge help. She can hold monsters still to let me past certain places, shoot star bits out at enemies, and collect 1-Ups and coins that I can’t reach. Having that extra heart during a boss battle makes a big difference. And the bonding is great. Every time we hear the music that goes along with “You got a star!”, we hug or high five. Mario Galaxy 2 is great. A-.

Before I started my father-daughter replay of Twilight Princess, I used the Wii to play through Wind Waker for the first time. Despite the fact that it’s an older game, I really enjoyed it. And while I found the wide-open ocean somewhat monotonous, the stealth bits and context-sensitive combat music were very well done. All-in-all, I may prefer Twilight Princess, but Wind Waker was a stellar game, and it gets an A-.

I really enjoyed the original Zuma. I played a ton of the free online version before buying the Playstation 3 version. When I heard of Zuma’s Revenge, I jumped all over it. I’ve played it a ton, as has my wife. And while she’s much better at the game than am I, we both finished and enjoyed the game. They added a number of really fun mechanics. There are levels in which you slide rather than spin, and levels in which you have the ability to switch between two locations. There are also bosses every ten levels or so. It’s one of my favorite casual titles, and as such gets the same A- that Mario Galaxy 2 and Wind Waker got.

Disclaimer: There are many concerns about kids and video games, and so I’ll state up-front that parents absolutely need to be familiar with the games that their children play and the ESRB ratings of those games. You should no more let your child play Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto than you should let that child watch Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead. Some media are just not meant for kids.

That said, I’m a gamer, and I’ve got the gaming tree to prove it. But whereas I started video gaming around age eight, my daughter has been exposed to video games for the bulk of her life. From her iXL to her Diego game on the Wii to the iPad games she plays, she’s never really known life without video games, as they’re easily as prevalent a form of entertainment as television in our household. (not at issue for this article, but all are secondary to good old books)

When I get home from work in the evenings, I generally have about an hour to spend with my four-year-old daughter before it’s time for dinner and then bedtime. Sometimes, we’ll play her favorite board game and sometimes we play with her Thomas the Train set, but I think her favorite thing to do with daddy is to play video games.

One that we’ve had an absolute ton of fun with is Super Mario Galaxy 2. We played a little bit of the first game in the series together, but I’d already finished the game when she was very young, and didn’t have it in me to start over. Mario Galaxy 2, however, I’ve never played without her. We’re nearly finished with the game, and she’s gotten very good at using the player 2 star to hold enemies still, collect 1-ups and coins, and throw star bits at enemies. She’s only 4, but having her play with me legitimately makes the game a lot easier.

For parents with older kids, reversing the roles might be fun. If your kid can handle those crazy jumps and accurately pilot Mario through a level, let him! Take over the player 2 star yourself and do what you can to help him stay alive.

Mario Galaxy 2 is a fabulous game for parents and kids to play together, but although we’ve loved it, it’s not my daughter’s favorite. Her favorite is Zelda: Twilight Princess. I’m not sure how this came to be, but she’d rather watch my second playthrough of the game than do nearly anything else. When there are areas devoid of enemies, she likes to run around, often as wolf-Link, digging up coins. Elsewise, she loves to watch me navigate dungeons and talk to NPCs

It’s hard to think about all the games coming out in 2012. I’m up to my neck in Skyrim and Trine 2, I still want to finish off the Riddler challenges in Arkham City, and I have yet to start Skyward Sword, Deus Ex, Ico, or Infamous 2.

With the exception of the top few items on the list, I’ll likely wait for the enthusiast blogs to weigh in before I make any purchases, but there’s some good stuff here, including a couple games in which I hadn’t been interested until I did a little checking around.

1-The Last Guardian
Top on the list is a game that I’ve been looking forward to for years. It’s true that I have yet to play through the copy of Ico sitting next to my PS3, but I plan to. Everything I’ve heard about The Last Guardian has made me want to play it even more. The game has been slated to come out in 2012, but whether that’s February or December is anyone’s guess.

2-Thi4f
Yeah, the name is weird as hell. I imagine they’ll give it a colon and a tag line at some point soon. There’s nothing specific to indicate that the game will be coming out in 2012, but I’m hopeful.

3-Amy
The release date on this game has been pushed more than I was in second-grade. It’s a 2012 release now, and I plan to download it on release day. It’s been a while since I played a proper survival horror game, and Amy looks to be a good one. The latest rumor says that Amy will be released next week, so Amy is likely the first chronological release on this list.

4-Dishonored
Slated to come out in the second quarter of the year, Dishonored is a first-person stealth game. That immediately grabbed my attention. When I saw that the people working on the game are the same folks who did Dark Messiah of Might and Magic and Thief: Deadly Shadows, I got even more interested. I’ll be keeping my eye on this one.

5-Quantum Conundrum
Quantum Conundrum is a downloadable game for XBLA and PSN, and it should be out early this year. Like Narbacular Drop and Tag: The Power of Paint before it, Quantum Conundrum sounds like exactly the kind of game that Valve would snatch up for use in Portal 3. But this time, instead of portals or spray-on gel, the gimmick is switching between four dimensions that overlap in space. I can see this creating a lot of interesting scenarios for puzzles similar to the ones in Portal.

6-I Am Alive
Another game that’s been delayed quite a bit, I Am Alive is supposed to come out in Q1 this year. The description and environment makes me think of Enslaved without the sci-fi. Post-apocalypse, everyone’s just trying to survive. Some dude has to get from A to B, across the destroyed cityscape.

7-Borderlands 2
Although I had a lot of complaints, I did really enjoy Borderlands. I doubt they’ll have the same ideas for the sequel as I’d once suggested, but I’m hoping for a wealth of improvements. With any luck, that will include a better interface on the PC. It will likely be released in 2012, but there are no guarantees.

8-Monaco
It’s possible that you’ve never heard of a little indie game called Monaco. If not, let me clue you in, because the game sounds like a multiplayer Team Fortress 2 meets Pac Man. Monaco is a top-down 4-player stealth action game wherein players are executing a heist. Each player’s thief has a different role. Maybe yours can pick locks, demolish walls, foil security cameras, or see through walls with infrared. There are gameplay videos on YouTube, and they look awesome. They’ve been planning to release Monaco for a long time, so with any luck we’ll see it very soon.

9-Far Cry 3
After an agonizing first playthrough, I decided that I loved the first Far Cry. The second was somewhat less to my liking, but still fun. The weird thing is that the first few games seemed to have little in common other than the name. No recurring characters, themes, or plots. The game will have the same sandbox feel as Far Cry 2, but add experience-based leveling. They’re adding stealth gameplay as well, which is something I love. We should see Far Cry 3 sometime in 2012.

10-Mass Effect 3
The Mass Effect series is something that everyone seems to love, and yet I’ve never felt nearly as strong about it. The ending of Mass Effect 2 was indeed very good, but overall I can’t help feeling a certain ambivalence for the series. Rather than grabbing it as soon as it comes out on March 6th, I may wait for the price to drop.

11-Journey
Journey is something of a mystery to me, and yet I’m still intrigued. You’re a little pup tent looking thing, travelling through the wilderness towards a mountain. What do you do on those travels? Not sure. Is it fun? No idea. But you can meet other players randomly, since as I understand it, there’s no way to play offline. You can’t communicate with them other than by wordless shouts, but they’re there. What can you do together? I can’t say. Hopefully more info arises before the springtime release, as I’m strangely intrigued.

12-SpyParty
SpyParty is a reverse Turing test in the same vein as the multiplayer mode of Assassins Creed, in which you need to convince other live players that you’re a computer-controlled character. One player is a sniper in the bushes outside a dinner party, and he’s got a single bullet. The other is a spy attending the dinner party who has to steal a single item. You can see where this is going. I watched people playing SpyParty in early 2011 at PAX East, and I’m intrigued.

13-Starcraft 2: The Heart of the Swarm
As underwhelmed as I was at Starcraft 2, the Zerg are my favorite. So I’ll probably pick up the Zerg expansion. As long as I can burrow a huge swarm of zerglings beneath a group of unsuspecting space marines, I’ll be happy. The look on their faces when you pop up in their midst is priceless. Nobody seems to know when the expansion will come out, but 2012 seems reasonable.

14-Prototype 2
Prototype and Infamous are similar in a lot of ways, but I have to say that I prefer Prototype. Why? It’s probably because I like the gliding better in Prototype than in Infamous, and I prefer running up walls to clowly climbing them. It’s not at all because I like leaping from 10 story buildings to elbow drop a tank and then eat the guys who jump out of it before it explodes. Not at all. April 24th. Prototype 2.

15-Diablo 3
Diablo is the king of isometric action RPGs. I’ve played Torchlight, Heroes of Norrath, Sacred 2, all the Dungeon Sieges, and a bunch of others I can’t remember right now. Mostly I play them multiplayer with my wife. But everyone likes Diablo the best. If I recall correctly, there’s a huge DRM issue here that might dissuade me from buying the game at all, but if they do away with it I’ll likely get a copy eventually.

16-Mechwarrior Online
You know what I love about the Mechwarrior games? I love that they’re relatively slow-paced. I love it when my mech is marching STOMP STOMP STOMP through the mountains and I get a missile lock warning and I know that I’ve got about seven seconds before the LRMs hit. Even more, I love to customize my mech. I love deciding that I can remove two heat sinks in the left arm so that I can move the autocannon ammo there, making room for short range missiles in the torso. I love to spend a half hour figuring out exactly the right way to customize my mech. It’s fun.

If reports are to be believed, the new Mechwarrior game is due out in Q2, and will make light, medium, and assault mechs into an analog of character classes, making each useful in their own ways. You’ll also be able to play with a number of other people, which to me is both a pro and a con. I always loved the single-player campaigns in Mechwarrior, and I have no desire to go online and have my ass kicked by a thirteen-year-old. We’ll see how this one shapes up.

17-Prey 2
Prey 2 seems like it’s going to have close to nothing to do with the first game in the series. It’s the same thing that the Far Cry series did between its first two games: new game, same name. That’s fine with me, because although I finished the original Prey, I thought it kind of stunk. I’ll be keeping my ear to the ground on reviews for the game once it comes out this summer, although I may wait for it to hit the bargain bin.

18-Torchlight 2
I played Torchlight, but I was never able to get into it quite the way everyone else did. Still, the fact that it’s going to be multiplayer makes it a good candidate for me to play with my wife. To that end, I may end up buying it.

19-Bioshock Infinite
Like Mass Effect, Bioshock is a series that everyone seems to love. Well, everyone else loves it. Not me. I played both Bioshock games and was underwhelmed both times. I’ll probably do the same thing with Bioshock Infinite that I did with the other two games. I’ll play it a year or so after it’s released, picking it up for under $20.

20-Alan Wake (PC)
People with XBox 360s played Alan Wake a while ago, but PC gamers like myself have to wait for “early 2012”, when the PC version is supposed to come out. The gameplay videos I’ve seen don’t draw me, but I’ve heard friends rave about how much they loved the game, so I’ll likely try it out.

And that’s what I see coming in 2012. No idea if the Wii U will be out this year, but CES is next week, and we should learn a lot more about it then.